Who needs cookbooks?

Book critic Dwight Garner writes in his book The Upstairs Delicatessen that "reading cookbooks is how I unwind." And this is a man who reads books for a living.

Another bookish person, Shannon Reed, also writes about reading cookbooks fo fun in her book Why We Read.

I confess I never read cookbooks, even when I'm cooking. I just throw things together and see what happens. The trouble with recipes is that I never seem to have the necessary ingredients.

It baffles me that some people read cookbooks more for pleasure or relaxation than for help in the kitchen.  Garner says, "I read myself to sleep with them." And thus a cookbook can be bedtime reading, although the size of many cookbooks would seem to make them unwieldy in bed.

I do not read at bedtime — I may watch PlutoTV if I can't sleep — but sometimes during the day I may want something short and relaxing when I don't have enough time to open a novel or a serious work of nonfiction. I have a few options, other than cookbooks, for these moments.

I have collections of comic strips, for example. I particularly like my Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes books.

I also love books containing movie reviews by Pauline Kael. I always find them enjoyable in short doses — and most of her reviews, originally printed in The New Yorker, are brief.

Early Dave Barry books also serve this purpose very well.  There is nothing like a good laugh for relaxation.

But if other people prefer cookbooks to unwind, that's fine with me.