Here are 80 books that Girl Through Glass fans have personally recommended if you like
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When my daughter was three years old, I enrolled her in a “creative movement” class. I had taken dance lessons for ten years when I was younger, so this felt like an obvious choice. At age eleven, her teacher suggested that she had the facility, talent, and drive to pursue a career in ballet. What followed was seven years of being a “ballet mom,” as she studied, performed, competed, and ultimately left home to pursue her career. The Still Point comes from this experience. It's a novel about dark ambition, but it's also a love letter: to my daughter, to ballet, and to the mothers who became my closest friends inside the ballet studio walls.
This luminous novel, written by former professional Joffrey Ballet dancer, Meg Howrey, follows the life of a dancer, beginning in NYC’s West Village in the 1980s.
It is a beautifully written rumination on not only dance but ambition, family, and secrets as well. Meg and I met for the first time when my daughter had just started on her pre-professional path, and her writing about dance is unmatched.
'A luminous chronicle of betrayal, sacrifice and creative ambition'
The Observer
'Lush and enjoyable... a glossy, fast-paced family drama'
The Times
'My idea of a perfect book'
Jami Attenberg
'By the book's close, readers will be clamouring for an extra curtain call'
Guardian
Once a year, ballet-obsessed Carlisle Martin spends a few precious weeks with her father Robert and his partner James at their enchanted apartment in Greenwich Village. Time spent with them is impossibly glamorous, filled with art, dance, beauty, books, and grown-ups who take her seriously as they battle the AIDs crisis and
Then, one summer, a devastating…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
When my daughter was three years old, I enrolled her in a “creative movement” class. I had taken dance lessons for ten years when I was younger, so this felt like an obvious choice. At age eleven, her teacher suggested that she had the facility, talent, and drive to pursue a career in ballet. What followed was seven years of being a “ballet mom,” as she studied, performed, competed, and ultimately left home to pursue her career. The Still Point comes from this experience. It's a novel about dark ambition, but it's also a love letter: to my daughter, to ballet, and to the mothers who became my closest friends inside the ballet studio walls.
This book! I received this gorgeous black and white photobook as a gift when I was an aspiring dancer myself in the 1970s.
I was obsessed with the story of a young girl cast as Marie in the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker. The story is told primarily through Krementz’s photos of a young dancer’s life in New York City: ballet classes, auditions, rehearsals, backstage moments, and performances.
This book is one of the most magical and special books of my childhood – which appealed to me as a dancer back then but later heavily influenced my work as a photographer as an adult.
A ten-year-old student at the School of American Ballet in New York describes her classes and the preparation for and performance of her role in the ballet "The Nutcracker."
When my daughter was three years old, I enrolled her in a “creative movement” class. I had taken dance lessons for ten years when I was younger, so this felt like an obvious choice. At age eleven, her teacher suggested that she had the facility, talent, and drive to pursue a career in ballet. What followed was seven years of being a “ballet mom,” as she studied, performed, competed, and ultimately left home to pursue her career. The Still Point comes from this experience. It's a novel about dark ambition, but it's also a love letter: to my daughter, to ballet, and to the mothers who became my closest friends inside the ballet studio walls.
This novel, besides having a gorgeous cover, offers a sneak peek through the window into the lives of professional dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet.
It follows three young women from their days as students into adulthood. The plot has many twists and turns, but it is primarily a novel about female relationships in the cutthroat world of professional ballet.
Thirteen years ago, Delphine Leger abandoned her prestigious soloist spot at the Paris Opera Ballet for a new life in St. Petersburg -- taking with her a secret that could upend the lives of her best friends, fellow dancers Lindsay and Margaux. Now thirty-six years old, Delphine has returned to her former home and to the legendary Palais Garnier Opera House, to choreograph the ballet that will kickstart the next phase of her career -- and, she hopes, finally make things right with her former friends. But Delphine quickly discovers that things have changed while she's been away...and some secrets…
When Annie Thornton, midwife and apprentice witch, falls through time to a 15th-century Yorkshire village with her telepathic cat, Rosamund, she befriends Will and Jack, two soldiers returning from the French Wars. Mistress Meg, Annie’s ancestral aunt living in the 15th century, is…
When my daughter was three years old, I enrolled her in a “creative movement” class. I had taken dance lessons for ten years when I was younger, so this felt like an obvious choice. At age eleven, her teacher suggested that she had the facility, talent, and drive to pursue a career in ballet. What followed was seven years of being a “ballet mom,” as she studied, performed, competed, and ultimately left home to pursue her career. The Still Point comes from this experience. It's a novel about dark ambition, but it's also a love letter: to my daughter, to ballet, and to the mothers who became my closest friends inside the ballet studio walls.
Ballet has come under much scrutiny in the last decade: from the perpetuation of racial stereotypes to the abuse of power by directors to the promotion of damaging physical behaviors.
This non-fiction book by a former student at the School of American Ballet balances the problematic elements of ballet with the author’s love affair with it. Filled with both history and her own personal story, I found this book to be not only educational but also deeply moving.
It will resonate with not only dancers but anyone who has abandoned a childhood passion.
"Neither romanticizing or decrying the dance world, Robb beautifully explores the push-pull of masochism and perfectionism—preoccupations not just relevant to aspiring dancers, but to anyone who's ever pursued an almost-impossible dream." ?— Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep and Also a Poet
An incisive exploration of ballet’s role in the modern world, told through the experience of the author and her classmates at the most elite ballet school in the country: the School of American Ballet.
Growing up, Alice Robb dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. But by age fifteen, she had to face…
I’d thought I was writing a novel about someone putting a life back together after everything fell apart but, when I’d finished, readers told me I’d written a book about vivid, authentic friendships. It was a welcome surprise. From Charles Dickens to Sylvia Plath, nuanced characters have always interested me and so, when writing, I set myself the task of believable dialogue and interactions which readers can relate to like it’s their own friends sitting around a table; laughing, crying, or bickering. When a life falls apart it’s often friendships that are tested to breaking but then become stronger as a result.
Although dipping into glamorous strata of New York society, the friendship dynamics reminded me of the period of adulthood where you start to make your way in the world… Often it involves new jobs or new cities and sometimes women discover the people they thought were close friends are not. Parallel journeys of female friends can put them into tension where paths diverge and taking space is the only solution. Here, avid reader Katey is moving beyond her humble beginnings by talent and character alone, while room-mate Eve is escaping her privilege and family ties; their agendas blend well for a while until they spin off in different directions. Resourceful Katey continually starts over in her smart, sharp-humoured style becoming ever more able to rely on herself.
From the #1 New York Times-bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway and A Gentleman in Moscow, a “sharply stylish” (Boston Globe) book about a young woman in post-Depression era New York who suddenly finds herself thrust into high society—now with over one million readers worldwide
On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have…
I worked in a bookshop for three years in Washington, DC, and it was the best job I’ve ever had. There’s nothing like being around books all day and working with colleagues who love them just as much as you do. I’ve also worked in publishing, and loved that as well. So it’s no surprise that, like a lot of avid bookworms, I love reading about bookish environments—and writing about them, too.
I have a lot of nostalgia for the ‘90s, so it was great to read a novel set in New York City in 1999. It was deeply evocative of both time and place–I could feel the sweltering heat of the non-air-conditioned flat where Kendra spends her time waiting for her boyfriend to come home.
It was fun exploring a city I know and love through her eyes on her summer Fridays.
You've Got Mail for a new generation, set in the days of AOL and instant messenger banter, about a freshly engaged editorial assistant who winds up spending her "summer Fridays" with the person she least expects
Summer 1999: Twentysomething Sawyer is striving to make it in New York. Between her assistant job in publishing, her secret dreams of becoming a writer, and her upcoming wedding to her college boyfriend, her is plate full. Only one problem: She is facing an incredibly lonely summer as her fiancé has been spending longer and longer hours at work . . . with an…
Chasing Light is a lyrical meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile beauty of everyday life. At its core, it is a story of resilience, forgiveness, and the transformational power of human connection. It sheds light on the overlooked realities of homelessness and addiction, while emphasizing the importance of compassion…
Writing is about the metaphysical as well as the rational if it’s any good. As an author, I am always more interested in the wreckage of a crisis than the crisis itself—in the aftermath. Survivors search for purpose above all else. They undertake long sojourns, seek spiritual counsel, or find solace in art or politics. As a writer who has dealt with illness for most of my adult life, I think one path that is shared by all these novels is the discovery of agency—over one’s body, one’s choices, and one’s own life and death. There lies meaning.
I love novels that open up slowly, drawing the reader into a world of coincidence and connection.
Cunningham’s classic AIDS novel draws heavily on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to create a haunting trilogy—a day in the lives of three women in different decades of the 20th century. I was drawn into the lyrical, elegiac stories about the heartbreaking choices we make as women and gay men, and the consequences of our actions on others.
This book taught me about finding the extraordinary in ordinary moments and a deeper understanding of how suffering stays in the body and is carried intergenerationally.
Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize and Pen Faulkner prize. Made into an Oscar-winning film, 'The Hours' is a daring and deeply affecting novel inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf.
In 1920s London, Virginia Woolf is fighting against her rebellious spirit as she attempts to make a start on her new novel.
A young wife and mother, broiling in a suburb of 1940s Los Angeles, yearns to escape and read her precious copy of 'Mrs Dalloway'.
And Clarissa Vaughan steps out of her smart Greenwich village apartment in 1990s New York to buy flowers for a party…
Some writers produce historically important novels of our life and times. I’ve always preferred the “smaller,” timeless stories that dig deep into domestic lives and relationships. For me, the best adventures are always the psychological ones. The bond between mothers and daughters is a rich, if perhaps underexplored, source of literary tension. Often fraught and a battle between deep love and debilitating frustration, it’s the stuff of the highest drama. In The Youngster, the daughter and mother have landed in a place of mutual love, which is then tested by extraordinary – and shocking – circumstances.
This is a stimulating memoir about that peculiar love-hate battle between two strong-willed women who happen to be mother and daughter.
There were moments in this searingly honest biography where I felt complete fellow-feeling with the author, re-experiencing similar moments of drama in my own family.
The author recounts her childhood experiences living in a tenement, looks at her relationship with her mother, and describes the lives of women bound to husbands they didn't love
I'm an Englishman who fell in love with a 300-year-old former sausage curing hut on the side of a Slovenian mountain in 2007. After years of visits spent renovating the place, I moved to Slovenia, where I lived and worked for many years, exploring the country, customs, and culture, learning some of the language, and visiting its most beautiful places. I continue to be enamored with Slovenia, and you will regularly find me at my cabin, making repairs and splitting firewood.
In contrast to Slovenology, this book digs deeper into Slovenia. A memoir by an American who moved to the country in the mid-1990s after falling for a handsome Slovene poet, Debeljak tells the story of her life as she takes on the head-twisting nature of Slovenian, and gets to grips with a culture that is often quite different to that of her homeland.
Debeljak does not hold back on personal details, and I loved how she pours her heart into the story, sharing so much of her inner feelings with us. She also writes with humor and beauty. I think Slovenia has changed quite a lot since Debeljak's story, but it's still a great read for any Slovenia fan.
"[A] sunny, can-do look at intense culture shock. Debeljak makes a humorous, self-effacing guide to her own story and the only complaint I have is that I wish she’d told us more. I hope someday she gives us a sequel."—Christian Science Monitor • "Witty and warm."—Kirkus Reviews
Forbidden Bread is an unusual love story that covers great territory, both geographically and emotionally. The author leaves behind a successful career as an American financial analyst to pursue Ales Debeljak, a womanizing Slovenian poet who catches her attention at a cocktail party. The story begins in New York City, but quickly migrates,…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
I love a romance where the hero has his viewpoint changed by the woman he falls in love with. He might become a better family man, or transform his politics, or change his priorities, but it all cases loving her alters him. Additionally, I love a heroine who is exceptional in a distinct way but overlooked or dismissed by others. They can be bluestockings or spinsters, reformers or quiet and shy, but they’re all steadfast and they all derive strength from the hero’s support. In short, the love they find together makes them better people.
This is a great book because love makes Mulligan reevaluate what matters most.
Mulligan isn’t a villain exactly, but he does less than admirable things. He believes money is the way to accrue power, and he tries to fix Justine’s problems with bribery. She can’t accept his methods as a way to solve problems, and he is faced with the choice to either rule the criminal world or love the girl.
Obviously, he picks the girl. His story arc is so satisfying because he will do anything for her!
"Nothing makes me happier than a new book from Joanna Shupe!"-Sarah MacLean
The final novel in Joanna Shupe's critically acclaimed Uptown Girl series about a beauitful do-gooder who must decide if she can team up with one of New York's brashest criminals without losing something irreplaceable: her heart.
Manhattan kingpin.
Brilliant mastermind.
Gentleman gangster.
He's built a wall around his heart...
Orphaned and abandoned on the Bowery's mean streets, Jack Mulligan survived on strength, cunning, and ambition. Now he rules his territory better than any politician or copper ever could. He didn't get here by being soft. But in uptown…
