Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I got most of my cookbooks at used book stores, usualy after falling for them as library books--so take sarajane's advice.
My advice is: Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian and World of the East Vegetarian cooking, then the rest of her books, especially for Indian food. Also for Indian food, Julie Sahni's Moghul Microwave (wish she had a tip for getting the vindaloo fragrance out of your micro, though) and her vegetarian cookbook. Anything by the Moosewood group for healthful and delicious food. Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery is a great and inspiring read.
And you will have a great foundation since you already have Joy of Cooking on your list. Do try to get a 1964 or 1975 edition.

Tried to grill a pizza. The dough was to thick so the outside was burnt and the inside was not cooked.

About the worst thing I did was one time I put some chicken on the grill and then went inside to let it cook. I sat down and proceeded to fall asleep and slept for about 3 hours. I woke up and could smell the burned chicken outside. The chicken was no longer recognizable, it looked like a grill full of hockey pucks almost.

My mishap was even attempting to grill and having flames shoot up.

got the coals way too hot and burnt all the meat uP:(

I would say this is our failies funniest or worst grilling mishap. And you can blame it on my husband. We live an hour from my College Alma Mater so we like to go tailgate during football season. The first game of the season we were all pumped up to go we loaded up our car with all our grilling neccessities, our chairs, our tent, our cooler with the marinated meats and wings. Well low and behold we get there and unload the car. My deareast husband forgot to load the most important part THE WEBER! (rolling eyes) Thank goodness it was a College town with friendly folks. Our tailgating neighbors offered to let us use their grill. Unfortunately it came at the cost of sharing our delicious bar-b-q wings.

One time I BBQd several burgers and put them on a plate on a picnic table. I ran inside for just a minute to get the other food, and when I came out the burgers were already gone! The dog had jumped onto the picnic table and helped herslef to the entire plate of burgers!

Thank you for the cookbook giveaway.

I remember the first time I tried I put the BBQ sauce on before the meat was on the grill and the sauce was so sugary the sauce burned before the meat cooked.

I tried to grill tomatoes - I left them for what felt like seconds, came back, and they were a slimy mess stuck the grill in mushy pieces - ah, well.

The expensive tenderloin that we bought was "overexposed" on the grill and became chewy and dry; an ugly meal it was!

I can be dumb, at times when I'm grilling. Last year, I didn't pay enough attention to the grill, it caught fire and nearly burnt the house down. Happily, the local fire department came to me rescue.

Is it funny to undercook chicken and then serve it to a house full of guests?

I usually leave the grilling to someone else...though I'm still trying to work out the timing on veggies for the grill pan, the past couple of times I've combined things that have very different cook times which results in either undercooked or charred.