"Modernist Cuisine" by Myhrvold, Young & Bilet (Part 1)

[Renn]

So Amazon says my preorder date was July 16. Dare I hope that was early enough to grab one of the first 500?! Fingers crossed...

June 7th over here...first 500 or not, I think our patience will be amply rewarded no matter when it gets to our doors!

Saddest part is...while I will be receiving the book it will be a tortuous several months before I come back home to open it for the first time. (I suppose there are definitely sadder stories out there =D).

Thanks for egullet and the rest of the internet! At least I'm sure there will be a wealth of peeks here and there to tide me over

[coz]

I ordered last month so I guess I'll be waiting a bit. I'm so excited for it. AMZN still has a March 9 estimate for my order but I won't get my hopes up.

[Scout_21]

Just curious if any of the reviewers noticed typos

[Dave the Cook]

I saw a few very minor editing issues (not sure I'd specifically call them typos), but since it wasn't clear to me that what we were seeing was what actually went to press or a slightly earlier version, I didn't call anyone's attention to them.

[Chris Hennes]

I saw one, in the first volume. An "and" instead of an "an" I think.

[Chris Amirault]

That's what I saw as well: the "and"/"an" and a missing period. And I've read a whole lot of pages by now.

[Scout_21]

Thanks for the replies. I'm always a bit cautious when buying a first edition due to the typos. I never know how to alter the book with the errata...especially one that looks this good.

[nickrey]

Only a few minor ones of the type identified by the others. It seemed to have been very thoroughly proof read to me compared with other book sets I've seen of that size.

[Wayt Gibbs]

I'm collecting all errors, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, so that we can correct them in the second printing. I'd be grateful if you could email those to info@modernistcuisine.com. Once physical books have arrived at booksellers and are on their way to customers, we'll put up a page on modernistcuisine.com with corrections and clarifications.

[Wayt Gibbs]

Good news for members in Europe: Amazon.co.uk has fixed the problem they were having with the page for Modernist Cuisine, so it's now available for preorder again with free delivery in the UK.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modernist-Cuisine-Art-Science-Cooking/dp/0982761007/

[infernooo]

Just placed my order via Amazon - really looking forward to this, brilliant work Nathan!

[hapacooking]

I ordered it on Amazon on May 25th and Amazon moved my ship date from March 7th to March 11th.

I guess I am not in the first 500

[lesliec]

Amazon Canada still has mine down for March 7 - I'm hopeful! Although the trick will be to see how long it takes to re-cross the Pacific. Nathan, you couldn't divert one of the ships from the printers slightly south, could you?

[ScottyBoy]

If you have a first run with errors it will be a collectors item

[blackp]

Just checked Amazon Canada and they still say my order will ship on March 7.

I hope so - In October, like others I cancelled an Amazon.com order made originally in June to save around $100 with Amazon.ca.

If I had known that a $100 saving could have cost me a month I'm not sure I'd have made that decision with hindsight.

In any case Chris is keeping my curiosity sated for now.

Please keep up the good work.

Regards,

Peter.

[nathanm]

The boat docked and has been unloaded. Books have already been sent to various distributors. I am told that some books may ship to customers very soon, as soon as today, although that depends on things well beyond my control. If that works out, then some lucky people will have books as early as a week from now.

[runwestierun]

Woo hoo! Wooooooo hoooooooo! I have my fingers crossed.

[Amida0616]

Just checked Amazon Canada and they still say my order will ship on March 7.

I hope so - In October, like others I cancelled an Amazon.com order made originally in June to save around $100 with Amazon.ca.

If I had known that a $100 saving could have cost me a month I'm not sure I'd have made that decision with hindsight.

In any case Chris is keeping my curiosity sated for now.

Please keep up the good work.

Regards,

Peter.

Exact same situation here. Keeping my fingers crossed.

[Chris Amirault]

A couple weeks of cooking with this makes a strong case against the e-book version. Due to the book's rich content and excellent cross-referencing, some part of my house looks like this basically all the time:

Tomorrow, we'll have an exciting additional surprise for everyone. Be sure to check in!

[Fat Guy]

My feeling is that just dumping the pages of the book into a .pdf or e-reader file, like they did for the reviewer preview, is bound to be quite inferior to the printed volumes. However, an e-book edition designed with that application in mind could be great. It could eliminate the need to open multiple volumes at once, and there are many things you can do with an e-book (hyperlinks, video, etc.) that you can't do with paper. It would require significant programming resources to make an e-book worthy of Modernist Cuisine, and the technology to do it really well wasn't even out there when they started working on the book, but today I think it could be done.

[runwestierun]

A couple weeks of cooking with this makes a strong case against the e-book version. Due to the book's rich content and excellent cross-referencing, some part of my house looks like this basically all the time:

Tomorrow, we'll have an exciting additional surprise for everyone. Be sure to check in!

What could it be?!

What could it be?!

I hope it's the macaroni and cheese recipe. I've got my iota carrageenan and a big hunk of comte!

[nathanm]

Steven makes the key point - when we do an e-version we want it to be really good, with good cross linking and interactive features. We'd also like to have some video content. This could be really cool, especially in a next-generation tablet or laptop.

But, as he points out that is a lot of work, so we are putting it off for now. I want to see how people like the paper verison, and frankly we need to take a break.

Not that we are getting a break mind you, we are working hard promoting the book. We have had a series of dinners for chefs and food writers. Tonight and tomorrow night we have these dinners, with some of the most famous chefs in the country attending. So that has the team plenty busy for now.

[JBailey]

Nathan

Any chance you will have a raffle for one or two of the rest of us to obtain a seat at one of your dinners?

[eG Forums Host]

Those interested in the Modernist Cuisine book should check out this exclusive look at the book, including excerpts and a Q&A with the team!

[nathanm]

Nathan

Any chance you will have a raffle for one or two of the rest of us to obtain a seat at one of your dinners?

We had a dinner last night which included Thomas Keller, Corey Lee and other chefs. Tonight we have one with Harold McGee, Dave Arnold, Jose Andres, David Kinch and others.

That is the last dinner we are having until some point in April. We have not picked dates yet, and I am not sure we will do more but if we do some other dinners we'll see whether we have space for some other guests.