Books like What Did You Eat Yesterday? 20 — picked by fans

If you are anything like me, and of course you are, you’ll feel like you are dream-reading your way through this deliciously enchanting book. Mr. Delessert is a true master of this craft, and these pages are filled with soul food.

Until 2000, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking (1881) was considered the first cookbook authored by a Black American. It was then that historians chanced upon an incredibly lucky finding: a copy of A Domestic Cookbook at the bottom of a box. As far as we know, there’s only ONE copy left of this little 39-page collection of recipes, which was first published in 1866.

Historians and researchers have delved deep into the mystery of author Malinda Russell, but we barely know more than she tells us in her introduction -- a life story laid out in stark, gripping first-person over just two short pages. As a business owner who specialized in pastry, Russell’s book has upended assumptions about 19th-century Black women and African American cuisine. In such a slim volume, she still includes 70+ kinds of cake and comments that “a great many ladies have wished to… show more.

I love all things family and in Play to Win, Author Ja’nese Dixon gives us a look at a family of seven but the parents get a divorce and are divorced twenty years before they remarry. This series shows how a family deals with divorce, co-parenting, business, marriage, relationships, and broken matters. Throughout this entire series, you will see some twists and turns that will shock you, but also teach you the power of forgiving and love. The value is that when you are a part of a family, you become a unit, even when there are moving parts.

When it comes to ethnic cookbooks this is one of my all-time favorites. I didn't know where to start with soul food except that I wanted to make it at home, and this book is perfect for that.

While it’s not chock full of traditional recipes, each is full of flavor and is also healthier than what you’d get at a restaurant. 

Tokyo, Form and Spirit was the catalogue for an exhibition at the Walker Center in 1986 with contributions of the most important Japanese urban writers of the 1990s: Henry Smith, Kenneth Frampton, Donald Richie, Marc Treib, Chris Fawcett to name but a few. While I never saw the exhibition, the perspective of the authors created a mental scaffolding that shaped my understanding of the transition from the feudal to modern Japan. Henry

Smith is reading the city of Edo through a bipartite scheme characterized by the sky and the water, or how the city was viewed differently from above, as incarnated by the gaze of the samurai and other authorities, and from below, typically by the commoners who enjoyed life across the city’s waterways. He then searches for this structure in today’s Tokyo where the city’s skyline is dominated by wirescape and high-rise edifices, and the water has almost evaded.… show more.

Sadly, I think this book is, in my opinion, underrated by readers. It’s a novel with scenes always starting at 1 am, and it follows interconnected characters through their nights working and living in Tokyo. The reader not only gets a really interesting peek into life for graveyard workers, but the setting is evocative.

I particularly love how the mundanity of working the night shift as a cab driver, a social assistance hotline worker, or a procurer for movie sets, etc., are really captured in a very quintessential Japanese way that many American readers may overlook. Read this one to learn more about honor and obligation in modern Japan as told through interesting characters!

The mother of all otaku guides was published by current Otaku USA magazine’s honcho Macias and famous otaku writer Machiyama and reflects their tastes and idiosyncratic approach to the subject. Admittedly, you can find better, more complete, and updated otaku travel guides now (e.g. my book… wink wink) but this colorful book has a funky turn-of-the-century design and features things that you will hardly find elsewhere, like interviews with Mandarake owner Masuzo Furukawa, magazine editor Hisanori Nukata (about action figures), past cosplay queen Jan Kurotaki and Japan’s most notorious plastic model kit collector Chimatsuri. It’s a wonderful blast from the past.

Transience and the importance of tiny details are two important underpinnings of Japanese culture, and this book captured them beautifully. I love books that use personal stories to tell an overarching epic, and the rise of Tokyo from a little fishing village to one of the biggest cities in the world is just that.

The author’s poetic style also aligns with how thoughts and phrases would evolve in Japanese, making it very evocative. It is a love letter to this city of contradictions and gives a look into the deeper sides that most visitors would simply not think to ask about. 

If you want to explore the capital's neighborhoods while learning about the history and culture of each spot in great detail, I think this is the book for you.

I really love the large, readable maps and how the book encourages you to not just walk down a prescribed path, but to really wander, explore and soak in some of Tokyo’s less-visited spots.

Like other traditional guidebooks, Essential Japan, aims for almost encyclopedic coverage of its topic, and it successfully manages this without seeming overwhelming—not an easy task judging by other major guidebooks.

In the edition I read, most (but not all) of its “how to” instructions are up to date, but where it really excels is in helping visitors choose what kinds of experiences they would like to have in Japan. For instance, I found its suggested itineraries for Tokyo to be spot-on, and the entire book is rich with recommendations.

Because the book is heavy, I suggest using it to map out your trip itinerary—and then take a lighter reference guide and use online sources for your actual trip.