Books I've Read Recently ...

• House Under Snow by Jill Bialosky (fiction) -- a good read. The main character flashes back to times when she was a teenager and when she was younger; focus is on her relationship with her mother and how it has effected her in the past and in the present
  
• The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco by Marilyn Chase (non-fiction). Details how the plague managed to become endemic in the western United States. A bit slow to start with lots of names and dates, but becomes more interesting as more organizations and people start to cover up the existence of plague in San Francisco to protect their financial situations. All of which comes to an end when the 1906 earthquake hits.
• Don't Try This At Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World's Greatest Chefs (short stories). I'll never see a wedding cake in the same light again after reading this. Some stories were much more enjoyable, some were definitely laugh out loud funny, and some were downright cringe-inducing. But almost all had one thing in common -- a loud, obnoxious chef who berated and abused his underlings.
• Untangling My Chopsticks by Victoria Abbott Riccardi. An enjoyable memoir about her year in Kyoto learning tea kaiseki, the formal meal that can precede the tea ceremony. Also included were some recipes which I plan on trying soon. Her descriptions of the food made me want to go out and find some Japanese food, and makes me look forward even more to my upcoming trip to Tokyo. And as always, I enjoy reading stories and memoirs set in places that I've been to because I can then more easily picture the setting in my mind.