Here are 100 books that That's Paris fans have personally recommended if you like
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Travel teaches and molds us. It certainly changed my own life.
At age 19, I picked up my backpack and schoolbooks and moved from America to Austria. That experience opened my eyes to the world, and I’ve never looked back.
Today, I’m a travel journalist, author, and editor at Go World Travel Magazine. I’m always on the lookout for fascinating tales of travel, but I especially appreciate learning from other female adventurers. They continue to inspire me.
I hope these books will inspire you, too.
Mia Kankimäki’s thoughtful travel memoir explores female adventurers of the past, from Karen Blixen of Out of Africa to Yayoi Kusama, an artist who voluntarily lived in a psychiatric hospital for decades. Kankimäki confronts her own personal demons while considering the challenges these mighty women faced as they journeyed into places unknown.
The Women I Think About at Night is part travel essay, part history lesson, and an all-around enjoyable narrative about female adventures who defied cultural norms to build the lives they wanted.
In this "thought-provoking blend of history, biography, women's studies, and travelogue" (Library Journal) Mia Kankimaki recounts her enchanting travels in Japan, Kenya, and Italy while retracing the steps of ten remarkable female pioneers from history.
What can a forty-something childless woman do? Bored with her life and feeling stuck, Mia Kankimaki leaves her job, sells her apartment, and decides to travel the world, following the paths of the female explorers and artists from history who have long inspired her. She flies to Tanzania and then to Kenya to see where Karen Blixen-of Out of Africa fame-lived in the 1920s. In…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Travel teaches and molds us. It certainly changed my own life.
At age 19, I picked up my backpack and schoolbooks and moved from America to Austria. That experience opened my eyes to the world, and I’ve never looked back.
Today, I’m a travel journalist, author, and editor at Go World Travel Magazine. I’m always on the lookout for fascinating tales of travel, but I especially appreciate learning from other female adventurers. They continue to inspire me.
I hope these books will inspire you, too.
Continuing the saga that began in her first book, I Grew My Boobs in China, Savannah Grace moves into new territory with Backpacks and Bra Straps, which takes the reader to Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, through Western China, and into Tibet. Grace gracefully weaves in interpersonal dynamics of traveling with family and the backpacking community while coming-of-age during travel in Asia.
Savannah Grace’s best selling, award winning saga of her family’s four-year-long backpacking adventure continues. "Backpacks and Bra Straps" picks up where "I Grew My Boobs in China" leaves off, offering insights into how family dynamics are affected by such intensive togetherness as well as a candid, intriguing look at world-wide travel and the camaraderie of the backpacking community, told from a perceptive young woman’s viewpoint. This second instalment of her Sihpromatum series takes us to Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, through Western China and Tibet, and finally, to watch the sun rise over Mount Everest in Nepal. Savannah’s initial reluctance to travel…
Travel teaches and molds us. It certainly changed my own life.
At age 19, I picked up my backpack and schoolbooks and moved from America to Austria. That experience opened my eyes to the world, and I’ve never looked back.
Today, I’m a travel journalist, author, and editor at Go World Travel Magazine. I’m always on the lookout for fascinating tales of travel, but I especially appreciate learning from other female adventurers. They continue to inspire me.
I hope these books will inspire you, too.
Isabella Bird was one of the great female adventurers of the 19th century. She spent six months in the Sandwich Isles (now Hawaii) in 1873 and then traveled in the Rocky Mountains, at a time when Colorado was discussing statehood. Bird’s writing still inspires to this day.
Contemporary author Linda Ballou expands Bird’s unique story in Embrace of the Wild. Ballou deftly digs into Bird’s culture and experience as a women adventurer of those days, bringing Bird again to life for all her fans.
“I have just dropped into the very place I have been seeking but in everything it exceeds all my dreams. “ Isabella Lucy Bird (1831-1904)
Some people live to travel; Isabella Lucy Bird traveled to live. Dare to saddle up with this equestrian explorer on her way to becoming the best-loved travel writer of her day. Set off on a voyage from England to the South Seas. Jump ship in Honolulu, then hop on board the Kilauea steaming its way to sleepy Hilo. Be captivated by the lavish beauty of the Sandwich Islands. Charge up the flank of a living…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Travel teaches and molds us. It certainly changed my own life.
At age 19, I picked up my backpack and schoolbooks and moved from America to Austria. That experience opened my eyes to the world, and I’ve never looked back.
Today, I’m a travel journalist, author, and editor at Go World Travel Magazine. I’m always on the lookout for fascinating tales of travel, but I especially appreciate learning from other female adventurers. They continue to inspire me.
I hope these books will inspire you, too.
Florence Nightingale, Freya Start, Gertrude Bell, Karen Blixen, and many other well-known women share their travel adventures in this wildly audacious and inspiring collection of stories. From encountering a madman in the Amazon to surviving a shipwreck, these intrepid globe-trotters overcome many challenges in their dauntless explorations. This book will show you a different side of these famous women.
Real ladies do not travel - or so it was once said. This collection of women's travel writing dispels the notion by showing how there are few corners of the world that have not been visited by women travellers. There are also few difficulties, physical or emotional, real or imagined, that have not been met and usually overcome by these same women. Jane Robinson's first book,Wayward Women, was a guide to women travellers and their writing, and having read over a thousand of their books she is uniquely qualified to compile this anthology. Life is never dull for her intrepid…
I became fascinated with France and the French as a child, and over the past 40 years I have spent as much time as I can here. I’ve been fortunate to be able to combine my dual passions—for France and for literature—in creating a series of classes for CUNY study abroad programs and for the Politics & Prose bookstore. Through this work, over the past 20+ years I have spent much of my time reading and teaching works of literature that explore France and the French people in depth. I now live in France, and I continue to find the French endlessly fascinating. I think I always will.
People often ask me what is the best book to take with them to Paris if they can only take one, and this is the book I always recommend. This collection of essays, which can easily fit into a purse or a backpack, is brimming over with fascinating stories about “the people, places, and phenomena” of Paris. Downie’s encyclopedic knowledge of history, and the idiosyncratic curiosity that draws him (and his readers along with him) into a variety of offbeat situations make for fun as well as highly informative reading. It’s a great book to take with you to read in Paris, or sitting at home dreaming of or remembering Paris—and the selection of topics is varied enough that I believe there’s something in it to interest almost anyone.
“Beautifully written and refreshingly original . . . makes us see [Paris] in a different light.”—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Swapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions. Curiosity and the legs of a cross-country runner propelled him daily from an unheated, seventh-floor walk-up garret near the Champs-Elysées to the old Montmartre haunts of the doomed painter Modigliani, the tombs of Père-Lachaise cemetery, the luxuriant alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens and the aristocratic Île Saint-Louis midstream in the Seine.…
I’ve gone to France often during my life. I always buy books that look interesting while I’m there, mainly to keep my French in good shape. I tend to pick authors and subjects which catch my eye. Some get discarded, but most give a fascinating and often very different perspective on life than I find in English novels and essays.
This book has the stunning feature of omitting the letter E entirely. It’s also a fascinating story. I confess I read it at least in part to see whether the author has slipped up anywhere or whether he had recourse to clumsy constructions, but he was a writer of too much skill and ingenuity for that!
"Trahir qui disparut, dans La disparition, ravirait au lisant subtil tout plaisir. Motus donc, sur l'inconnu noyau manquant - "un rond pas tout à fait clos finissant par un trait horizontal" - , blanc sillon damnatif où s'abîma un Anton Voyl, mais d'où surgit aussi la fiction. Disons, sans plus, qu'il a rapport à la vocalisation. L'aiguillon paraîtra à d'aucuns trop grammatical. Vain soupçon : contraint par son savant pari à moult combinaisons, allusions, substitutions ou circonclusions, jamais G.P. n'arracha au banal discours joyaux plus brillants ni si purs. Jamais plus fol alibi n'accoucha d'avatars si mirobolants. Oui, il fallait…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Growing up, I always loved reading young adult romances where first love and growing up seemed like the perfect kind of summer story. As an adult, and especially as an educator, I have too often seen the likes and interests of my female students dismissed as silly or frivolous, romance being at the top of this list. I love cultivating a diverse classroom library, one that includes books for everyone’s interest and background. Writing stories for young readers and about what interests them has been the great privilege of my life.
Not only do we have a summer romance, but we’ve combined it with French pastry. Literally a recipe for success! Anne-Sophie Jouhanneau’s debut YA novel follows seventeen-year-old ballerina, Mia, as she travels to Paris for the summer for an elite ballet program. Of course, she meets the charming Louis, and together they explore all that Paris has to offer. Rife with beautiful descriptions of Paris and plenty of croissants, this is the perfect summer romance.
As sweet as a macaron from Laduree, this romantic novel set in Paris about an American ballerina and a charming French boy isparfaitfor fans ofAmerican Royalsand Netflix'sEmily in Paris.
Mia Jenrow has always known she's destined to be a professional ballerina. In fact, it’s in her blood—according to family legend, her too-many-greats-to-count-grandmother once danced for the Paris Opera and was painted by Degas himself! Her parents say it’s just a fantasy, but to Mia it’s so much more than that. It’s her fate.
Mia is planning to spend a magical summer in France pursuing her dream, but as she pirou-ettes…
I love Paris. This city endlessly stimulates both my head and my heart. Always in movement, everchanging, it, like all cities, is a living organism, manifesting the spirit of all those who live here, past and present. Through a bunch of different projects and a handful of books, I’ve been trying to map its creative DNA, seeking out and championing the people and places who contribute to forging Paris’s own distinctive identity today. Makers Paris (Prestel) and Makers Paris 2 (Ofr. Éditions) evolved out of more than a decade running slow-travel pioneer Gogo City Guides, and my latest book The Paris Flea Market (Prestel) is a new stop on this journey.
This guide to Paris is a one-of-a-kind, thoroughly personal—almost private—address book that takes in such fanciful themes as acupuncturists, beekeepers, Bouquinistes, cabarets, fancy dress, Esperanto, and rose gardens.
It provides a vision of Paris that is so idiosyncratic, so fully lived, so persuasive and contagious, so far from cliché, pandering, and pretention, that I discover the city anew each time I browse its beautiful, letterpress printed pages. I think I first met Ivan and Benoît, the founders of Astier de Villatte, when I interviewed them for the first edition of Makers Paris, and since then, they have become my compass for living a bold life of beauty, fun, and freedom.
I was born in England to Australian parents and have lived most of my life in Australia. My family all live there, and I grew up in Sydney. Most of my books have been about Australian-related themes or historical figures. I don’t think enough is known about Australian history outside Australia. Australian writers have always struggled for recognition outside Australia. Publishing can be an unfair business. I’m more interested in reading nonfiction than fiction. True stories are much harder to write and get right, and there’s a bigger responsibility involved. You’re dealing with real people. The dead ones also have families.
One of the original Aussie literary expats in the 1940s, Kershaw penned this slim but sparkling memoir of his time in Paris and rural France before his death in 1995.
It is superbly written and completely unknown. Grab a copy if you’re lucky enough to find it. It proves that books don’t have to be long to stick in the memory. Sometimes, the shortest ones are the best.
In this witty and entertaining illustrated memoir, Alister Kershaw describes the pleasures of his prolonged residence in France - a country of villages - from 1948, when even Paris was a series of villages. In post-war Paris, Kershaw lived a penniless but joyous existence and captures a Paris long gone. The author conjures Paris prior to the triumph of the technocrats and town planners. It also traces the author's move into the Berry, two hours south of Paris, where he lives in a hamlet of six houses and finds a rural life amongst a small group of traditional Sancerre winemakers.…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
The most important formative experiences of my life were contained in the years I spent living and traveling with Brenin, a wolfdog. I can safely say that just about every worthwhile idea I have had – I am a professor of philosophy and ideas are supposed to be my thing – stemmed from those years. I have written many books since Brenin died, all of them, in one way or another, concerned with the question of what it is to be human. I am convinced that we can only understand this if we begin with the idea that we are animals and work from there.
Commonly thought to be about death, and our fear thereof, what I find most striking about this book is its piercing and utterly haunting analysis of the role of memories in making us who we are. The most important memories are the ones that are lost, and then return in a new form, deeply woven into our bodies, emotions, and feelings – as blood, as glance and gesture, as Rilke puts it. Rilke was a poet; this was his only excursion into the art form of the novel. So, the book falls apart after a while. But if anyone has written anything better than the first fifty pages or so, I am unacquainted with it.
First published in 1910, Rilke's "Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" is one the first great modernist novels, the account of poet-aspirant Brigge in his exploration of poetic individuality and his reflections on the experience of time as death approaches. This new translation by Burton Pike is a reaction to overly stylized previous translations, and aims to capture not only the beauty but also the strangeness, the spirit, of Rilke's German.
