Books like Left Bank — picked by fans

If you’re new to the history of Paris, this is an ideal book to start with. It’s a sweeping account of this fabled city’s story, from Roman times to the turn of the twenty-first century, but while lofty in aim it’s charmingly fun to read, the author being adept at packaging wide-ranging information into a fast-paced narrative. One neat feature is the way Jones highlights certain Parisians or Paris locations, giving them breakout sections that allow readers to delve deeper into the likes of Madame de Sévigné, Rose Bertin, and Josephine Baker. You realise that Paris is so much more than the sum of its stones. Yes, it’s about beautiful monuments, but just as much about the people who have breathed such life into Paris that their spirit lives on to this day.

How Parisians survived Nazi Occupation—to what extent they resisted or collaborated—has been debated for decades but Sebba looks through a new lens: What did Parisiennes, specifically, do during these years? She was just in time to interview some key women who, having survived concentration camps, went on to live defiantly long lives. Others wouldn’t speak, still traumatised by their experiences. But Sebba has plenty to work with, and the pace at which she pulls it all together propels this book’s sense of importance. One can’t help but feel relieved that these stories have now been told. Some of it is shameful, sure, but you ultimately remember the tales of until-now-unsung heroines, whose fierce love for their city, above even their own welfare, makes them well deserving of a place in Paris history.

Paris has long been a city of creation—but also a city of people who have made these creations their own. Perhaps this is why Paris influences the world; it sells so much more than products; it sells a lifestyle. Francophile and Professor Joan DeJean has written numerous books on French culture, but this is a particular favourite of mine. Head-spinningly well-researched, The Age of Comfort looks at how Paris architects and designers, from the late-seventeenth to late-eighteenth centuries, created the concept of a private life, and all the necessary accompanying interior-design components, from sofas to toilets to baths to desks. It was a century that changed the way Parisians lived, and in turn, changed them as people, before going on to transform the rest of the world. Utterly fascinating. 

Think of this as the literary equivalent of a Gobelins tapestry, its various threads expertly woven together to tell a grand and colourful story. McAuliffe has expertly intertwined the narratives and anecdotes of some of the most fascinating of Parisians to create a wonderfully engaging overview of the Belle Époque, that fabled and hedonistic between-wars Parisian era. By telling the history of these times through the eyes of the key players who lived—and shaped—these times, McAuliffe has produced a book that almost reads like a novel. It’s a fabulous treatment she also employed for her subsequent books that explored later periods of Paris history: Twilight of the Belle Epoque, When Paris Sizzled, and Paris on the Brink.

Baldwin writes both fiction and non-fiction beautifully and intimately and if you don’t know his non-fiction work then this is a very good place to start. Across a number of essays, he elegantly sets out the deep struggle faced by Black Americans and articulates how a different humanity, in America and beyond, and a different future can be realized. 

Of course this title will catch anyone’s attention, but I’m including it here because of how mundane the plot is. It’s just people people’ing and therefore experiencing and learning. They just happen to be all the things they are. It’s a fun and funny ride living in a small Parisian apartment with these characters, eating their food, and laying with their friends. 

Vreeland begins by telling readers: “The first thing to do is to arrange to be born in Paris. After that, everything follows quite naturally.” And that declaration sets the tone for this delightful, witty monologue, as told to Paris Review editor George Plimpton and originally published in 1984. D.V. makes you laugh out loud, and long for Paris, beauty, and really, really good lingerie.

I inhaled this gripping thriller in one sitting! It really made me go, wait, what? The author did a phenomenal job keeping me focused on certain details, while twirling other important details in the background. So when it all pieced together, I was truly in awe.

The twists in the book kept me hooked all through. Just when I thought, ah, I think I know where this is going, the very next chapter would make me change my mind. The pacing of this book added to the thrills.

I loved the writing and the characterization. This book, to me, is a great example of combining a most-loved genre while representing important voices and exploring and debunking assumptions. The main character is Filipino-American and I loved reading about the experience through the character’s eyes and told over many years so there’s a clear arc of the changes that time has brought… show more.

Who doesn't want to be Posey Parker? She’s smart, she eats loads, and never gets tubby. She’s always gorgeous, though she’s not at all arrogant about it. Give Posey a compliment or a sandwich; she’ll take the sandwich every time.

On the negative side, she lives in the 1920s with the world still reeling from the first world war, and women’s rights decidedly sketchy. Also, she’s trapped on the Night Train to Paris with a sense of impending doom. (I totally identify with that, having traveled on the Glasgow to London sleeper.)

L.B. Hatheway has crafted a book that offers the best kind of mystery and a great understanding of the time's history, and Clare Wille voices it flawlessly. 

You may know this book as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but you probably don’t really know it. Films, most notably the Disney cartoon, have grossly distorted this novel, often having Esmeralda ride off into the sunset with Phoebus. But the novel is really a very dark, Gothic story of love and lust, and one of the first existential novels. Frollo and Quasimodo both love Esmeralda, but she loves Phoebus, and he only loves himself. In the end, everyone dies, allowing their lust to destroy their common sense. Hugo wrote it to help popularize and save Notre-Dame Cathedral from falling into further disrepair. It influenced British author William Harrison Ainsworth to write The Tower of London, thus revitalizing British Gothic in a new way just as it did French Gothic.