100 Books Like The Piano Shop on the Left Bank

It is virtually impossible to write or even investigate medieval southern France, especially the famous Cathar Period without delving into this classic work.

Still available in different translations, Le Roy Ladurie takes us into the life of a 14th-century French mountain village and its people in a way no one else has ever attempted. Based upon meticulous church records of contemporary individual interviews and interrogations with alleged heretics in one small village by Church Inquisitors, the author gives us a look into the lives of common people of that time that has never been equaled.

I found myself returning to this small book time and again in creating my own setting and characters (including borrowing authentic names at times) for a near-contemporary portion of the story I wanted to build within the larger framework of time and place I was focused upon.

The reader gets a true sense of the… show more.

If we want to understand medieval or modern Paris, we need to gain some familiarity with all of the stages along the way. Robb provides some episodic portraits of some of those stages, and the chapter on the eighteenth-century architect Charles-Axel Guillaumot is one of the most arresting discussions I’ve ever seen of how the actions of those living in one epoch can reverberate for generations to come. Guillaumot literally saved Paris from collapsing in on its medieval past by bracing up the swiss-cheese-like network of tunnels that had been left behind by its medieval quarry workers.

Looking back across six decades, MFK Fisher, one of the most astute and evocative travel and gastronomical authors ever to put pen to paper, recalls the year when everything for her was new: France, Europe, marriage, food, culture. Based in provincial Dijon, Mary studied French, shopped in the open markets, learned to cook, and jotted down astute observations concerning everyone she met, while her husband wrote his dissertation. My first encounter with Tours, in 1979, reminds me of Fisher’s encounter with Dijon in 1929. Like her, I was warmed by the joy of discovery, the sense that every stone and leaf, every living thing that I encountered had layers upon layers of meaning, and it was my job to uncover some of them, revealing meanings that no one had seen before. 

We can’t understand the present unless we understand the past, but the reverse is also true: I would not be a good historian of medieval poverty – including all the layers of infrastructure, production, famine, religious ideology, and public policy that define, ameliorate and exacerbate poverty – if I did not also pay attention to how these forces work in the present, and to the actual lives of the people who are so affected. This book paints some of the best portraits I’ve seen of people who were trying to make ends meet during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. We now need a book on how and why the poverty landscape continues to change in the wake of the covid epidemic. 

In grad school, Adam and I had the same advisor, McArthur ‘Genius’ Kirk Varnedoe, and as a lifelong New Yorker reader, I’ve avidly followed his career. Paris to the Moon is an engaging memoir of his family and professional life as an ex-pat New Yorker writer in Paris during the 1990s. I love his insider-outsider perspective and the fact that he lived in my favorite neighborhood, rive Gauche at the boundary between the 6th and 7th arrondissements. With a sociologist-anthropologist’s eye, Adam interrogates the quintessentially Parisian (why Café Flore has surpassed Deux Magots in fashionability, for instance), attends lectures by celebrity sociologist Jean Beaudrillard, muses about the public reception of labor strikes, negotiates toddler culture in Paris, and take us food exploring with the iconic Alice Waters.

If this book doesn’t make you want to instantly move to Paris and become a writer living in a garret, there is something wrong with you.

It is very simply written in Hemingway’s straightforward style and is a reminder that you don’t have to write complicated sentences stuffed with overblown adjectives to tell a great story. An absolute classic and deservedly so. 

At age 15, I was captivated by Ernest Hemingway and his depiction of Paris in the 1920s. This book today reignites the enchantment of those years. Hemingway's profound influence shaped my aspirations as a writer. Through his eyes, I can vividly see Paris's cafés, salons, and vibrant social scenes, which ultimately became the backdrop of my dreams.

This book, rich with lovemaking, drinking, writing, betting at the track, and the bohemian lifestyle of so many young artists in Paris, reawakens my desire to immerse myself in that world. Hemingway's narrative voice and his novels continue to speak to me in a language that feels intimately mine, reminding me of the undying impact of his work on my life and aspirations.

While not strictly a book on fashion in Paris, it is a wonderful exploration of all things French after World War II, and one of those things was the Christian Dior couture house. Karnow arrived in Paris in 1947 to study, and soon landed a gig writing for Time magazine. One of his assignments was a cover story on Christian Dior, whose company, in less than a decade, had become so successful it was known as the General Motors of Fashion. In the Dior chapter, Karnow beautifully evokes the mechanisms and machinations of a French couture house, and shows how fashion and Paris were deeply intertwined at the time. The rest of the book is a rollicking good read, too.

Like Anderson, Gertrude Stein had a sense of humor about gay Paree. Who else would write someone else’s autobiography?

I love her tone of detached amusement when describing the artistic titans of the Lost Generation. If you don’t get it, try the recipe for Alice B. Toklas brownies. 

Amazing title aside, I love David Sedaris because he makes discomfort feel like a private joke you’re lucky enough to overhear. The way he writes about insecurity, awkwardness, and deeply flawed family life struck something real in me. His humor sneaks up on you, often in the middle of a sentence you weren’t prepared to laugh at.

What I admire most is how he never tries to impress. His voice is honest, a little absurd, and somehow both cynical and strangely tender. I didn’t just laugh; I felt understood. Sedaris showed me that writing can be honest without being sentimental, funny without being safe, and deeply human without needing a resolution.