The new recipe book has an un-rebindable command key with 'tab' that highlights the book but doesn't do much else. A lot of games use the Tab key as the inventory key. The inventory, all chests, all crafting menus, and all inventory-negotiating menus with villagers CANNOT be toggled closed because of this un-rebindable recipe book feature. This was not an issue before the Village&Pillage update, and now is a major hindrance to gameplay where there was none before. Please do look into this. It is very frustrating.

A skeleton can kill you before you close your inventory if you don't realize you'd need to exit via the ESC key. A motivated human being could toggle the menu out, then away, faster than said skeleton can reload.