NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18041, 5 April 1924, Page 11

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

A COOKERY BOOK. "The Up-to-Date Cook's Book" is intended by its author, Miss Mildred Trent, M.C.A., as a help to those "who, tired of wrestling with the vagaries of other methods of cooking, have turned to electricity as a way out." The chief advantage of electric cookery is the ease with which temperatures can be regulated, so that guess-work, with its many perils, is eliminated, but there are many points of importance to be observed, and Miss Trent prefaces her little book with a couplo of pages of clear and simple directions for the proper use of, electric cookers. These directions, by an accomplished, practical cook, will be found very helpful by those who prefer this newest method of preparing food. The recipes given by Miss Trent are, however, for cookery by any method —ordinary range, oven, or electric cooker. They cover a wide range—soups, fish, meat dishes, invalid cookery, vegetarian cookery, puddings and sweets, cakes, jams, sauce's, etc. —and are more than ordinarily concise and clear. The book is exceedingly cheap, and should bo a valuable addition to the housewife's kitchen library. (Copies from the publishers, Gordon and Gotch, Ltd., and Simpson and Williams, Ltd.)

ENGLISH PROSE. The "Chobham Book of English Prose," by the Hon. Stephen Coleridge, is—like all tho other recent books by the same writer—excellent in parts, There is little in English literature that Mr Coleridge docs not know, but there is a great deal that he does not admire, and it is unfortunate that his literary taste is not independent of his social and political conceptions. The merit of the present compilation is that each extract is introduced by enough biographical and critical comment to show the beginner precisely where he is, and with what great man he is :n company; the great demerit is that the literary gui/ie is also a preacher. It is a pity that a man of such genu'\;i3 culture should forget so often that culture is not gentility, and the great in literaturo not always tho gentlemanly. (London: Mills and Boon, Ltd.)

FAT AND FORTY. "No one," writes Dr. Cecil WebbJohnson, "in a grim book called "Why Be Fat?" "loves a fat man." To a comedian a certain degree of obesity may have its uses, but we are not all comedians (unless unintentionally), and in any case, "fat people seldom make old bone's." But the doctor has bowels of compassion. Having ridiculed avoirdupois, and given it physical terrors, ho undertakes to deliver the fat from their doubly cruel fate without passing them through an intolerably cruel purgatory. The recipe is simple and sensible, The man of forty (the dangerous age) must continue to exercise—half an hour, then an hour, then two or three hours daily, walking or .digging or cycling or swimming or horse-riding; and simultaneously he must reduce the quantity of food he consumes, if he has been a "square feeder," and absolutely eliminate sugar and potatoes and fat meat and cream if he has been accustomed to take "everything going." (Mills and B6on, London.) . The gospel according to Mr 3?. A. Hornibrook, on. the other hand, a physical culture specialist well known _in Christehurch, is abdominal exercise. In an admirably produced and illustrated book of about 70 .pages, he explains how by daily indulgence in seven or eight quite simple exercises, he reduced his weight 27 pounds in nine months After having been a "strong man and an athletic champion he found himself in his early forties rapidly putting on weight, which the accepted methods failed to reduce, and he tells us that relief came only when he; perfected a now 'system "whereby it 18 u possible ?o localise effort to the abdominal reeion to promote more internal, abdominal activity, and to concentrate on correct posture." Certified photographs show also that the method was even more successful with others than with himself or rather that others who were fTmoVsadly afflicted were reduce^ in a few months to normal and even grace ful proportions again. As the exer rises which are clearly described and Sated by the camera, take only a few minutes daily, there does not appelr to be an excuse.for any more protuberant martyrdoms (London: William Heinemann, LCfl.) ,

WANDERLUST. Those who sigh for the romantic isles of the Pacific Will sigh a Uttfe less ardently after they hare «* '*? Odyssey," by Mr Ja,k McLaren The duthor had been most thmgs that an adventurer without money or a profession could be before he saw the Pacific ior New Guinea, and this handsome volume tells the rest. «« Hi say of it only that it is as picturesque, as full of incident and as c arged with strange (and almost poetic) lanciee as the reader will expect from a writer of such romantic preparation. It is illustrated also with sixteen photographs, all admirably chosen and beautifully reproduced.(Jonathan Cape, London, through Angus and Kobertson, Sydney.)

BOOKS RECEIVED.

The Life and Tiiuos of Cleopatra. ' By Arthur Weigall: Thornton Butterwoith, Ltc, London. Whitaker's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage, and Companionage: J. Whitaker and bona, London. According to Their Deserts. By Cherry Velieyne. London: W. Collins Sons. Christchurch : Whitcorabe and Tombs, Ltd. Thirty Years at Bow Street Police Court. By William Thomas Ewens: T. Werner Laurie, Ltd. The Treasure of the Bucoleon. By A. D. Howden Smith: Jirentano's, Ltd., London. No. 3. By Lady Kitty Vincent. The Mystery of St. Michael's. (By Guy Thome: iterbert Jenkins. The Outsider. By Joan Sutherland.—Big Brother. By Rex Beach.—The Wild Bird. By Hulbert Footner: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd. A Book of Australasian Verse. Chosen by Walter Murdoch: Oxford University Press, through Angus and Eobertson, Sydney. The Doctor. By Isabel Cameron: Angus and Eobertson, Sydney.