One thing I would always buy right away is book recommendations. If someone recommends a book and it sounds interesting I just buy it right away even if I’m not sure that I want to commit to reading it or not. This helps keep my bookshelf filled with interesting stuff that I could still potentially read someday.
You'd probably enjoy "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking", which has beautiful photography and possibly goes deeper into cooking than any other book. The main author was CTO at Microsoft back in the day, and another author founded a company that makes a thermometer with some pretty neat tech.
