My mom has a few hundred cook books, but she really only uses a couple on a regular basis. Gourmet Today (the green one) is consulted 2/3 of the time. My mother had to buy one each for me and my brother. We also use Jacques Pepin's recipes all the time.

Other than that, I'm in a recipe group on facebook with a number of people I was already trading recipes with. We often get the bases of our recipes out of cookbooks, online, or from relatives, then post them with all the modifications and substitutions that turned out well.

I love cookbooks that use simple, natural ingredients that I have on hand or can get easily. I have one book with recipes that need pine syrup. I don't even know what pine syrup is. I'm currently reading Amy Pennington's cookbook The Urban Pantry. Love it!

@hungryMom we have a feature with Amy coming up really soon!

I could live off of the Ottolenghi cookbooks...but I just can't resist new ones!!

As a beginner / basic cook I vote for the classics. But internet recipes are definitely #1.

I've been given various themed cookbooks over the last 5 years (bread, slow cooker, vegetarian, regional, etc) and just received The Joy of Cooking and the BHG cookbook for Christmas this year. I gotta say, I've found more to cook in those 2 cookbooks than any of the others. Plus when I have any ideas of my own they tend to be simple, like "I want to make chicken and mushrooms!" or "I want to make pancakes!" and the Joy of Cooking has what I need.

I'm an avid cookbook reader/collector, although I've had to pare down in my smaller dwelling ... one of the tools which has helped me get a lot more value from my books is Eat Your Books http://www.eatyourbooks.com/home - This online utility helps you search through your existing books for recipes you may be looking for. For instance if you have lots of mushrooms, some bacon and cream you can do a search for recipes containing those ingredients from the books you already have on your shelf.

This has helped me use books I'd almost forgotten I had, reintroducing me to old friends and new.

I think I'm a lot more discerning about which books I add to my library - there really isn't room for something I'm not going to use. I often borrow from my local library to test-drive a book I'm not sure of or am unfamiliar with. My most recent addition is Tender II - Nigel Slater's book about fruit.

Alton Brown's books "I'm Just Here For The Food" 1 & 2 are great references. Rather than being repositories of recipes they are descriptions of techniques, and explainations of WHY certain things work and don't work. The Joy of Cooking. And, although I don't have it yet, I'm very interested to see the new America's Test Kitchen cookbook.

I get a LOT of mileage out of the America's Test Kitchen "The New Best Recipe" cookbook. Beyond that I have the King Arthur Flour "Baker's Companion". R&B (JoC), magazines, and the internet to fill in the cracks. The rest of my cookbooks stay in the garage and are referenced every few months.

I love Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, since it provides a good variety of recipes that range from simple to complex (and suggests a number of helpful variations).
I tend to use blogs to supplement the rest of what I do. I would love to hear about any cookbooks that provide simple / quick recipes, though!

Bittman, How to Cook Everything
Gourmet Today
Joy of Cooking

The rest is commentary.

I love cookbooks and I would buy a lot more if I let myself. But the truth is, a good 80% of my recipes, book or internet, are clutter. I don't have room, I haven't made them yet, I made them once and probably never will again, etc. I always find myself hanging out in the cookbook section of bookstores, and then I reluctantly put them back on the shelf.

I'm also a big fan of On Food And Cooking by Harold McGee. I have to make a lot of dietary substitutions, and this book explains a lot of the science. I don't know for sure, but I bet it's one of the sources used on Good Eats.

I always have room for more cookbooks (though I donate the Rachael Rays my mom keeps getting me...)! I love my OG (Original Gangsta, I mean, Gourmet), MAOFC, and my roommate's vintage Betty Crocker. My newest love is Joanne Chang's Flour, though I'm a bit biased... roommate is a baker at Flour and a server at Myers + Chang.

I feel kinda the same as Faith--and I wrote a cookbook too! The basics are the basics--Joy of Cooking, for me.

I don't usually use recipes off the Internet. They're usually pretty sloppily written, and I typically don't know the tastes of whoever's writing them well enough to know if they'll jibe with my own. (I made some Food52 recipes at Thanksgiving, and _bleh_. All too sweet. I had no way of knowing this because I had no real background or context for the people.)

Cookstr is a great online source, at least as a base--recipes are all from cookbooks, and for a lot of them, I at least have a good idea of the taste of the author.

The Rick Bayless Mexican Everyday cookbook in my household has been thumbed through and cooked through so much that I think I need to replace it. I have a few other books that I reference from time to time, but I mostly collect recipes and compile them into a box. I have go-to recipes for everything from pancakes to curry to my mother's kimchi.

I love my cookbook collection (though I'm definitely running out of room for it) of approx. 100 volumes and counting. Most of the recipes I try come from about 15 of these (The Barefoot Contessa books, Giada De Laurentiis' books, The New Basics Cookbook by Sheila Lukins & Julee Rosso, The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook by Jack Bishop, the Rosie's Bakery Baking and Cookie Cookbooks, Martha Stewart's Baking). I love most of the others just as much but use them less frequently.

I also subscribe to Bon Appetit and Food & Wine and like trying their stuff.

I'm using the internet/cooking blogs more and more (epicurious, Kitchn, Smitten Kitchen, etc) though there's something about having a book or magazine opened up in front of me that beats squinting at my computer monitor or a printout.

I also like the Joy of Cooking for the basics. I use the internet (Allrecipes.com) and have many church/organizations cookbooks that have some gems in them.

I rent cookbooks mostly through the Library and my Bookswim account before I make a commitment to purchase.

Otherwise, I refer to my basics - e.g. Donna Hay's Instant Cook or Off the Pantry.

Oh, and Cook's Illustrated. Even if I don't always agree with their taste, they give enough explanation of their recipes that I know why each ingredient is in there, so if I want to tweak it, I know exactly what will happen.

My mom has cookbooks wall to wall. The funny thing is she reads each book once, gets the gist of the ideas and the combination of ingredients and then never goes back to it. I can't handle it. I'm definitely a internet girl. I love Googleing the ingredients i have to see what is out there for me to make with them. I also find the internet is easier for finds recipes that are in your skill and taste level.

I would love cookbooks that are like knitting books, where they tell you the different amounts for amount of people - for instance, if there's a recipe for stew and you want to make it for 2-8 people, it could say in parentheses: onions 2 (4, 5, 6) or similar.
Also I want to know for every recipe - can you store this, freeze this, etc.

How To Cook Everything
On Food and Cooking

plus a handful of ethnic cookbooks (Child for French, Hazan for Italian, Jaffrey for Indian, Dunlop for Sichuan) and Cooks Illustrated online

I am a huge fan of Elizabeth David's books but for everyday, all the time cooking, the one I'm using now is Alice Waters The Art of Simple Food. Everything from this book is simple indeed and utterly delicious!

I love reading cookbooks and I have about 50. I have also borrowed many more from my local library and scribbled recipes down in notebooks. However, the ones I keep returning to time after time are:
How To Eat by Nigella Lawson
River Cottage Everyday by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Real Cooking by Nigel Slater.

...and The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

I have a ton of cookbooks and still more on my wishlist.. i don't always go to them for recipes, but I love flipping through them for ideas. And I love the publishing quality and photographs. I also like to have them to know that if there was something I wanted to make... I have a library to look through for how to. But.. my "go-to" cookbooks are Martha Stewart's Cooking School, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc At Home.

I've pared down my cookbook collection the past few years. Here are a few that made the cut;

The first Silver Plate cookbook (for Marabella Chicken anyone?)
A 1970's era Joy of Cooking
Both of Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking collections (for reading as well as cooking)
A binder full of pages from newspapers or magazine, or printed from some online source.

Everyone who loves to cook will enjoy reading and cooking from Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking and More Home Cooking.

I have to use multiple cookbooks. I have to say, I've learned incredibly simple but impactful techniques from chef books like Zuni Cafe. When it comes to simple/traditional recipes I often turn to JOC. Marcella Hazan and Biba are mainstays for Italian. I also love using Fine Cooking magazine as a reference. Of course, I have a gazillion cookbooks that I rarely look at, including The Silver Spoon and Gastronomique. Oh well...I like having them "just in case."

I'm currently loving Dorie Greenspan's new cookbook, "Around My French Table," - so many lovely and yummy things. I also love Judith Jones' "The Pleasure of Cooking for One" and Molly Wizenberg's "A Homemade Life." Like Laurie Colwin, the stories of these women's lives beautifully frame the delicious recipes.

@lella -- so true! I love Laurie Colwin.

I take out new cookbooks from the library to try. If I love them, I buy them. By reading them and cooking, I'm learning more and more what I like to cook and eat. Most cookbooks are beautiful, but if they don't suit my lifestyle, it doesn't really make good sense to me to invest in one.

For me:
How to Roast a Lamb by Michael Psilakis
Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson
Anything by Laura Calder
Anything by Ina Garten
In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite by Melissa Clark

And of course great resources like TheKitchn, Bon Appetit magazine (though honestly a lot less so these days!), and blogs like Orangette, Smitten Kitchen, Simply Recipes, 101 Cookbooks, Bitchin' Camero, etc.

my iPad, google documents (where I keep my recipes) and the internet as a backup.

Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is very close to my ideal cookbook. I love how the book is organized, that's it's comprehensive and large, that there are numerous suggestions for variations on a recipe. I really like her writing style, I like the font size and the weight & color of the pages, I like that the book is packed with information yet doesn't feel visually crowded.

And in my ideal world, there would be more photographs and there would be nutritional information for each recipe.

I would rather read a cookbook than most novels. When our house burned down a few years ago I lost 30 years of recipes and cookbooks... It was a little like losing friends.

@chzplz I would love to hear more about your google docs system!

I tend to stay away from mainstream cookbooks, though I own nearly a hundred of them, mostly vintage. What I'd really like is a cookbook that has recipes for all basic "farm" style cooking (breads, biscuits, cakes, cookies, roasts, vegetables, canning, poultry, etc.) that uses seasonal ingredients and one that is relatively comprehensive (like Joy) without being stodgy and creative without being pretentious or overly difficult and without using ingredients I'm totally unfamiliar with. Oh, and the recipes have to be from scratch, but simple.

Since this cookbook doesn't exist yet, I've been literally writing my own in a hard-covered, spiral-bound notebook - writing down all the recipes I want to try and putting all my favorite recipes in one place. The only crappy thing is that I have to find the recipes! Taken from my cookbooks and the internet, I've built up an okay repertoire, but I'm always hungry (no pun intended) for more. And there are a lot of bad recipes out there.

For me, it's Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone for family dinners, Joy of Cooking for baking, and the Gourmet cookbook for when I want a reliable but special-feeling recipe.

I like to read cookbooks before bed, but I'm trying to take them out of the library for that purpose. Good to keep them in circulation, to be enjoyed by all!

I think gardenali might be my food twin!

The book I use over and over and over again is Nigella's How To Eat book. It is genius!

I also love Nigel Slater and River Cottage Everyday. Also Tamasin's Kitchen Bible and Tamasin's Kitchen Classics.

Other cookbooks I couldn't live without -- Jacques Pepin's Fast Food My Way, and Delia Smith's How To Cook series. (If you think you know how to cook eggs or a pork chop, you probably don't, but Delia can show you how! And my tastes are far more in line with hers than with Cook's Illustrated).

For good fast food, I rely on old out of print editions of books by Marian Burros -- Eating Well is the Best Revenge and 20 Minute Menus.

I also like Jill Dupleix and her books, which are practically unknown here. Her recipes span a wide swath of ethnic -- lots of Asian and Mediterranean recipes -- and always work out well. Unlike others, they try to keep the fat down, nutrients up, and preparation minimal. I've tried to embrace Donna Hay -- I am a sucker for her aesthetic and the sort of lifestyle they seem to promise -- but I always find myself needing to tweak her recipes -- too bland, too watery, the timing slightly off. I just find that her recipes have never worked for me.

I love the River Café books, but haven't had them long enough to know whether they will become "old reliables".

Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and Other Stories has gotten a lot more use than much thicker cookbooks.

The loveliest and most personal and idiosyncratic cookbooks I own, and which I return to time after time, are those by Tessa Kiros. Apples for Jam and Falling Cloudberries present cooking for families, recipes from her family, which is Finnish and Cypriot, and that of her husband, which is Italian. So it is an unusual and intimate assortment of recipes -- which for the most part, appeal to children (one of my key concerns these days -- for despite their foodie parents, my kids are going through a picky phase).

I love all cook books, but all i need is Joanne Harris' the French Kitchen and the internet for the rest.

Most of Jamie Oliver's books are pretty much used for inspiration. Julia Childs The Way of Cooking is really tattered and has been my teacher go to.

For everyday I like Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone and Vegetable Soups because I could eat this way everyday. Another nice little book that I seem to keep using is "Vegetables" Pippa Cuthbert there are 100 really good recipes that are easy for everyday cooking.

I've got a good little cookbook selection started (lots of Julia Child, Dorie Greenspan, and David Lebovitz). I also have a lot of classics/bibles/go-tos for French and Italian Cooking (Hazan, Larousse Gastronomique, Je Sais Cuisiner, etc.). Recently, though, I've just started buying Kindle versions since I often use my iPad in the kitchen as a timer, to do conversions, look up recipes and hints, and watch vids while stuff is cooking. Love it! Plus, I feel guilty when I get all my new cookbooks dirty and torn (I'm a messy cook!). The iPad rarely gets dirty, and if it does, I just wipe it gently with a slightly damp cloth. I also love the keyboard/docking stand.

PS I've also just purchased a great electronic recipe database to keep track of the recipes that I have personally tried and enjoyed. I add a picture of the meal, too, since I usually take pics for my blog anyways. I'm using TheRecipeManager for Mac. I WOULD LOVE AN ARTICLE ON THE KITCHN ABOUT RECIPE SOFTWARE & REVIEWS!

I never use ANY of the cookbooks I have. I love them but I find I got online for all my recipes. I've decided to sell them during my next Yard Sale.

Like many, I collect cookbooks. My go to classics are similar; Joy of Cooking, Theory and Practice of Good Cooking. Lately, new books from Thomas Keller, and David Chang. But mostly these days, i use the iPad, a couple of apps, and Dropbox. I keep all my Instapapered recipes in directories on Dropbox. They're accessible anywhere.

When I'm actually in the kitchen, I mainly use cookbooks and online recipes as idea-starters. I'm not necessarily a by-the-book cook. Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything is The One for me. Just yesterday, I had a glut of cabbage and carrots from my CSA - flip to those ingredients in the index, and voila! Mexican Carrot-Chile Coleslaw, and Carrot-Brown Sugar Bread.

Other cookbooks I collect because they are beautiful, or because they remind me of a specific trip or place. I pick them up as souvenirs when traveling.

I tend to forget what books i have or what recipes are in them... super excited for that eatyourbooks site, thanks Foodelf!

Vegetarian Epicure [all of 'em]

Joy has been with me since I started cooking. I also refer constantly to Rebar which has THE BEST salad dressings and vegetarian food. Also love/worship/need Nigel Slater in any form. Tender Volume 1 has been my bedtime story for a week now.

Other well thumbed tomes include the Silver Palette, Silver Spoon & Julia Child. For recipes online I rely on Google Reader for an rss feed of about 15 cooking blogs, and epicurious.com for random recipes. Their sources on epicurious are rock solid and can generally be relied upon. I think that Instapaper suggestion just made my home/work internet browsing a lot more efficient.