Here are 2 books that The Well-Lived Life fans have personally recommended if you like The Well-Lived Life. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Growing Up with the Impressionists

Catherine Hewitt Author Of Art is a Tyrant

From Catherine's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Cultural historian 19th-century specialist Francophile Women’s history aficionado Art and literature enthusiast

Catherine's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Catherine Hewitt Why Catherine loves this book

There’s nothing like a letter or diary for whizzing you straight back into someone else’s head and bringing to life the world they inhabited. 14-year-old Julie Manet’s faded exercise books have become a precious art historical document. Julie was the daughter of the Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot and Eugène Manet, brother of the man who brought Paris Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe. Meanwhile, Renoir was like an uncle, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé her guardian, while Julie thought nothing of sauntering around the Louvre in the company of Edgar Degas; this was not a ‘normal’ childhood. Julie’s diary transports us to a high-ceilinged apartment in Paris’s 16th arrondissement, where the muffled scales of a girl’s violin practice overlap with snatches of erudite conversation at the table of the ‘grown-ups’. There’s an exquisite beauty in Julie’s unassuming description of the art world’s most famous faces. Here too we find a daughter’s heartbreaking response…

By Julie Manet , Jane Roberts (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Growing Up with the Impressionists as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Julie Manet, the niece of Edouard Manet and the daughter of the most famous female Impressionist artist, Berthe Morisot, was born in Paris on 14 November 1878 into a wealthy and cultured milieu at the height of the Impressionist era. Many young girls still confide their inner thoughts to diaries and it is hardly surprising that, with her mother giving all her encouragement, Julie would prove to be no exception to the rule. At the age of ten, Julie began writing her `memoirs' but it wasn't until August 1893, at fourteen, that Julie began her diary in earnest: no neat…


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Book cover of The High House

The High House by James Stoddard,

The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.

The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.

Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…

Book cover of Dr James Barry

Catherine Hewitt Author Of Art is a Tyrant

From Catherine's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Cultural historian 19th-century specialist Francophile Women’s history aficionado Art and literature enthusiast

Catherine's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Catherine Hewitt Why Catherine loves this book

Dr James Barry tells the story of Margaret Anne Bulkley, a poor Irish girl in late 18th-century Cork who, refusing to accept her lot and with the help of a few well-placed sponsors, got herself an education and some trousers and turned herself into Dr James Barry. This is a gripping and meticulously researched account of her climb through the medical world and her trek across the globe, where the fear of her gender being discovered lurks on every page. Some parts are gruesome (diseases are horribly well researched and the description of a human dissection in chapter 7 is positively stomach-turning), other parts heartrending (like her probable but unspoken love for Lord Charles Somerset, one of her mentors). But it is also so gripping that I couldn’t put it down. Dr James Barry is a vivid reminder that truth really can be every bit as thrilling as fiction.

By Michael du Preez , Jeremy Dronfield ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dr James Barry as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A Sunday Times Book of the Year

As featured on the BBC Radio 2 Book Club

Dr James Barry: Inspector General of Hospitals, army surgeon, duellist, reformer, ladykiller, eccentric. He performed the first successful Caesarean in the British Empire, outraged the military establishment and gave Florence Nightingale a dressing down at Scutari. At home he was surrounded by a menagerie of animals, including a cat, a goat, a parrot and a terrier. Long ago in Cork, Ireland, he had also been a mother.

This is the amazing tale of Margaret Anne Bulkley, the young woman who broke the rules of…


Book cover of Growing Up with the Impressionists
Book cover of Dr James Barry

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