I obviously can’t speak for others, but I am the type who will buy a book because it sounds so good and then accidentally end up not using it, or not for a long time. Maybe the best description is that I hoard information the same way some people hoard objects. (Sadly I’m a bit hoard-y with objects too.)
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Curious why you picked Ottolenghi as the author for DH’s cookbook gift?
My experience with his books has been that anything I’ve made has been delicious.
BUT when I read through the books, I am mentally exhausted by the list of ingredients and often just put the book back down instead of choosing a recipe and being excited by it. And this is coming from someone very comfortable with spices and indian cooking with its own “long list” of ingredients (that really aren’t that many of you’re familiar).
So, when I’ve made something it’s because someone recommended it, or I saw it made or described by someone, and was motivated to try it. Otherwise they are coffee table books for me - I love reading them, and they’re pretty (bit the binding is not great).
The one exception may be Simple - even there, he has ten core ingredients that you likely don’t already have in your pantry (mine is extensive in international ingredients and odd, one-off things, and I was still missing half). BUT, at least the ingredient lists are shorter (than the other books, not by themselves), and the dishes still taste wondeeful at the end of the day. So that would be my choice. (Perhaps also get some of the necessary ingredients - imo plain harissa is fine, rose harissa didn’t add much, and black garlic wasn’t life-changing - another umami booster will do fine instead).
And the other books have been out for long enough that if DH loves the style and flavor profile, many recipes from the earlier books are easily found on the internet (his Guardian column, of course, but also elsewhere if you search by recipe name or ingredient).
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Me too, but I am also trying to include a “Eat Your Books” option.
Is this something where you have to input data? For some reason, I have this notion that Eat Your Books requires a lot of front end work on my part, which is why I probably haven’t explored it.
It took me a while to decide to pay for a subscription and do the work of adding my own books, but it wasn’t too bad. You start typing the name, hit search, and you select it. I do make better use of my books.
With the paid subscription (or maybe it was a one time thing) you can add a LOT of cook books, and I decided I was going to make better use of what I had, or get rid of them…maybe.
The tricky part for me, at least so far, are my handful of digital cookbooks, which includes Plenty. I haven’t added some of them, because I don’t remember i have them in my Kindle app.
So the free part of the website won’t let you put in your own books? Or it just limits the #?
Limits the number. Also, I just added a few more books, and it doesn’t autopoulate when you put in just a few letters.
It does let you add online sources like Food52, and Seriouseats, and magazines and blogs. If you enter something you have a subscription for, it will add them as they are released.
I painstakingly added a bunch of old Gourmets, let them know a cover was wrong, and they asked me to share some others.
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Now I’ll know what to do, if I find any old gourmets lying around in my house. 
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