Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Eagerly Awaiting Nigella

Nigella's Book

Be of good cheer, Nigella fans, as I bring you tidings of great joy: "Nigella Express" will be serialised in The Times Magazine, starting this Saturday. And since it's the London Times, the first installment should be posted sometime Friday, US time. I'll be at the computer obsessively logging on to www.timesonline.co.uk from Friday morning on.
The single best day I've had in my years of freelance writing was the one I spent shopping and cooking with Herself. Usually I find it's not a great idea to meet your heroes; too often they are shorter, plainer and grumpier than their public personnae. Nigella, however, was smarter, funnier and ridiculously more gorgeous in person.
OK, enough of this babbling like a 1960's teenage girl who once touched Paul McCartney's jacket cuff. Back to cookbooks. I've had terrific success with dozens of Nigella's recipes and "How to Eat" is high on my list of "Cookbooks I'd Want if Stranded on a Desert Island or Confined to Prison for Poisoning Dick Cheney."
When I heard about "Nigella Express" I immediately posted a request on one of the online used book sites -- my technique for getting early copies of books I crave. It's no secret that book reviewers for magazines and newspapers sell their review copies this way and I've had 100% success in getting books before they hit retail shelves or appear on Amazon.
Until now. Not a single copy -- even though the British edition will be in stores in September, which means there are books in existence. Why haven't they made it to my beloved cyber stores?
And then I realized: every danged reviewer is holding on to his/her copy. Reading it. Cooking from it. Loving it.
Selfish; selfish; selfish.

5 comments:

lmc said...

very exciting! looking forward to reading this.

Lucy said...

Glad to hear the domestic goddess is more than just a pretty face!

George said...

In stores in September! Thank heavens for living in the UK.

Marjorie said...

LOVE HUH. that watermelon-feta salad has changed my life.

and what a great idea for a way to get early copies of stuff...sorry it didn't work in this case!

mikki said...

I love that on your list of things you'd want on a desert island, one is a COOKBOOK! If you are nice to me I will loan you my flashlight to read it.