Looking to up your culinary skills? Perhaps you've gotten into a cooking rut and want to spice up your dinners? According to neuroscientist and nutrition and food blogger Dr. Darya Pino, one way to improve your cooking skills is to try new things, and one great way to get inspired to try new cuisines and dishes is to read more fiction—specifically fiction that transports you to different worlds and cultures.

At her blog, Summer Tomato, Pino explains something that those of us who love to read already know: that reading about a place can often inform you about the location and its culture in ways visiting may not, and inspire you to learn more. A good book can stick with you for weeks or months. Take that impact and use it to inspire you in the kitchen. She says:

For instance, it's impossible for me to read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, which I've done several times, without craving Spanish tapas and red wine for the better part of a month (this is also why Spanish food is one of my absolute favorite cuisines). The Last Chinese Chef had me exploring obscure alleyways in Chinatown in search of the best dumplings and peking duck, and before reading it I would have said Chinese food wasn't really my jam.

Pino makes a few other book recommendations in the full post at the link below. What do you think? Have you ever been inspired to try a new dish or cuisine by a book you read? Let us know in the comments.

How Reading Fiction Can Make You a Better Cook | Summer Tomato

Photo by Zitona.

Sorting through the Amazon store for free ebooks can be a bit of a mess. To simplify the process Zero Dollar Books is a simple webapp that aggregates all the best selling free ebooks and shows them off in a nice clean view.

Zero Dollar Books taps into Amazon's Kindle best sellers list and then grabs all the books currently free. Since Amazon updates prices on the hour, so does Zero Dollar Books. The book list isn't always full of winners, but if you're looking to check out some free ebooks on your Kindle then Zero Dollar Books makes it easy. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed to get constant updates. If you're looking for more options for free ebooks, be sure to check out our guide to grabbing ebooks from the library and other sources.

Zero Dollar Books | via Digital Inspiration

It's fun to get a shiny new gadget or indulge in a great book or movie, but constantly purchasing these items can get pretty pricey if you do it often. If you want to keep getting new stuff without the downside of paying for it, however, work-life blog Savvy Sugar points out that all that's necessary is a couple of good online reviews:

Shhh, don't let anyone know, but you can get free books from authors, even the acclaimed and famous ones, if you try this trick. A lot of times, you can even get the book ahead of its release. All you have to do is start building up a nice repertoire of really solid and detailed book reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, the social network for book recommendations. If your Amazon reviews are good, people will start voting on them, which may qualify you for Amazon Vine, an exclusive club that "invites the most trusted reviewers on Amazon to post opinions about new and prerelease items." And if you're a popular Good Reads reviewer, authors will start reaching out to you to review their books.

Although I've never used GoodReads, I can vouch for the Amazon Vine program as I've been a member for several years. While it's definitely true that you can get a lot of great free stuff in exchange for writing a short review on the site, it's important to note that the stock of these free goods is limited. The good stuff goes fast and you have to hurry to quickly claim an item before someone else gets it. The selection isn't always ideal every few weeks, either, so you won't always find something you want.

Nonetheless, it is free and Amazon doesn't do anything to influence your reviews. It's all on the up-and-up. They just want popular reviewers to keep writing. Through the program I've gotten everything from a box of low-fat Wheat Thins to expensive digital cameras, so there's a wide variety of items. If you love books, that selection is always abundant because most people go through the other stuff. While there's no surefire way to get into the program, I believe I was chosen years ago because I wrote a popular camera review. You just have to start reviewing products people are going to care about and, if your reviews are well-liked, you might just receive an invitation. When you're not rolling in money but want new gadgets, books, food, or whatever, reviewing your way into one of these programs can help you get those things without paying anything at all.

Secrets to Saving on Your 7 Favorite Indulgences | Savvy Sugar via the Consumerist

Dear Lifehacker,
I've been hearing a lot about how the Department of Justice is sueing Apple and a few publishers for price fixing ebooks. That's interesting and all, but all I really want to know: Is this is going to make ebooks cheaper or not?

Sincerely,
Penny Pincher

Dear PP,
It's nice to see the Department of Justice looking out for the good of the consumer, but you're right, what really matters to most of us is whether or not these lawsuits will have a direct impact on the price of books. The DOJ's lawsuit is just starting, so let's start by getting a quick grasp on the news before we look at the possible end result.

Why Apple and Publishers Are Getting Sued in the First Place

The Department of Justice's case (which you can read for yourself via The Verge) accuses Apple and five major publishers of conspiring to raise the price of ebooks by creating a fixed price that all sellers have to use. The goal was to end Amazon's $9.99 price dominance and raise prices to the now standard $12.99-$14.99 for new ebook releases.

This came about because publishers worried that when Amazon sold books for cheaper than everyone else (at a loss to Amazon) it would set consumer expectation levels low and would make it difficult to sell books from other sellers—like Apple's iBooks—for the publisher's higher retail price. At first, publishers didn't have a lot of options to deal with this, but then Apple came in and offered the publishers agency pricing. The Wall Street Journal explains what agency pricing means:

It's a term for a new way of setting e-book prices that came about as Apple prepared to introduce its iPad in 2010. Under the traditional "wholesale" pricing model, publishers had long charged booksellers around half the cover price of a book, leaving booksellers to discount the books if they wanted.

When Apple entered the fray, it offered publishers the ability to set their own prices. Under the Apple arrangement, known as "agency pricing," publishers received 70% of the retail price and Apple took a 30% commission. But Apple also insisted that publishers couldn't sell more cheaply to any of its rivals. The publishers then were able to impose the same model on Amazon.

In a nutshell, this means prices on ebooks went up because the agreement with Apple made it so other sellers, like Amazon, couldn't lower the price on ebooks.

Three of the seven publishers have already settled with the Department of Justice, but Apple, Penguin, and Macmillan rejected the offer. Now that we know the reasons behind the lawsuit, let's see if any of this news is actually will have an effect on pricing.

We Might See Better Prices on Ebooks

It's hard to say with certainty whether we'll see price drops, so the answer is: probably. Amazon did manage to get out an incredibly short press release to describe its feelings on the lawsuit:

This is a big win for Kindle owners, and we look forward to being allowed to lower prices on more Kindle books.

At least for Kindle owners (and Kindle app users), you're likely going to see decreases in the price of some books from time to time. To stay competitive, other sellers like Apple and Barnes and Noble will have to keep pace. Amazon is selling these ebooks either at a loss or with a thin profit margin, so books will probably have short sales times (like around a new release) and will regularly return to the retail price. The important thing, at least for consumers, is that publishers can't set a minimum price. This means Amazon can once again take a loss to sell you a copy of a book if they want.

If you'd rather not deal with pricing, don't forget you can always just load up books from the library for free, and remember that some books just aren't that cost effective to buy digitally anyway.

Sincerely,
Lifehacker

P.S. How much do you think ebooks should retail for?

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