If their cookbook lending library is any indication, the owners of the newish Local Mission Eatery, on 24th St. near Folsom, probably feel the same way. For an annual fee of $35, members can borrow a book a week, providing they follow a highly generous set of rules. With titles like Ferran Adria's A Day at El Bulli, Grant Achatz's Alinea, and a multitude of Craig Claiborne volumes, possibilities run the gamut from fanciful and fantastic to immensely practical. Importantly though, the library applies a dose of community consciousness to the cookbook form, emphasizing that the sharing of a valued text among members of a community makes for shared experiences too. It localizes and articulates a larger phenomenon. When you borrow a cookbook and cook a recipe, you're immediately tied to everyone else who cooks that recipe. Yes, there are apps for that too -- features that illuminate what people in close geographic proximity are cooking -- but those are poor substitutes for dripping sauce on the same page.

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Death of the Cookbook, Greatly Exaggerated