I got a copy of the Fay Ripley book, which looks excellent - well laid out, and clear recipes. I like the notes on some recipes to suggest ways to make them suitable for babies or younger children, suggesting this is a real family cookbook, and not just a sleb flinging some recipes together to make some cash. Nice. I will be trying a few of the recipes when maternity leave starts! I was a bit confused by the way the chapters are arranged, as I am more used to the 'starters, mains, sides, desserts' arrangement of conventional recipe books - this was set out as days of the week, with a breakfast, mains, starters, desserts, and baking all presented per day. Aside from this, a beautiful looking cook book!
I also got a copy of 50 Shades of Grey, which I am sending to another MNetter - I tried to read it, managed the first 100 pages or so, and then lost the will to live. It is fairly painful. I would have been impressed had the book actually been published in 50 different shades of grey, as I feel that would have livened up the text. As it was, black words on off-white paper combined with the weakest set of female characters and creepiest set of male characters I've seen in a long time, made it pretty monochrome and not a book I can recommend.
thanks for the books though, I love reading new books, no matter how badly written they are, so this was a great opportunity! :)