Here are 100 books that Sister Stardust fans have personally recommended if you like
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As someone who lived through the very interesting and tumultuous 1960s and 70s, I am fascinated by details of other’s experiences of the same time frame. I inhabited the early 70s fully, going to so many once-in-a-lifetime cultural events: poetry readings, music performances, avant-garde theater, and ‘be-ins’ or ‘happenings.’ With a Masters degree in Creative Writing, I have been an observer of culture and art for several decades. I am the author of three collections of poetry, a book of short fiction, a novel, and a book for writers.
I loved this book because Patti Smith paints a true portrait of a young woman burning with passion to become a poet and artist. The book shows the struggles of committing to a life with no assurances in a city teeming with aspiring artists and writers.
What I love the most is showing the years it took, the alliances she made, the risks she took, the hunger she felt, and the desperate circumstances she faced and overcame. When her lucky break came, I was rooting for her! She had paid her dues, and she rose to the occasion when a band put her poetry to music, and she broke out to become a sensation.
“Reading rocker Smith’s account of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, it’s hard not to believe in fate. How else to explain the chance encounter that threw them together, allowing both to blossom? Quirky and spellbinding.” -- People
It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation.
Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence…
I have always been a lover of love stories, yet it can be difficult to find “love stories” that aren’t put into other boxes or aren’t genre romances. My debut is also a family drama that spans sixty years of the twentieth century, but it’s a love story at its core. It’s sometimes classified as a romance because it’s a love story set on a beach. Still, it doesn’t quite fit into typical romance frameworks, which have characters meet and pulled apart before finally ending up back together. My book, instead, explores the reality of loving someone over decades and building a life together.
This is one of those books I am in awe of. Deeply immersive, I had to be pried away from this story once I began. The writing is spectacular and an absolute masterclass on writing chemistry between characters and writing young love.
This book falls on nearly any top-five list of mine. It is truly stunning and heartbreaking in turn. (Sorry, this isn’t a very light list, is it??) But to me, what makes love stories powerful is all the ways that love can be lost, the truth that love can be fleeting, impossible to hold onto forever, even if you have spent a lifetime with the one you love, at some point we all have to say goodbye. This is what makes love so beautiful.
Now a Major Motion Picture from Director Luca Guadagnino, Starring Armie Hammer and Timothee Chalamet, and Written by James Ivory
WINNER BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY ACADEMY AWARD Nominated for Four Oscars
A New York Times Bestseller A USA Today Bestseller A Los Angeles Times Bestseller A Vulture Book Club Pick
An Instant Classic and One of the Great Love Stories of Our Time
Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents' cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared…
Hi! I'm John Glynn, and I'm excited to share some book recommendations inspired by one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs, "Cruel Summer." To me, this song perfectly encapsulates the heightened emotions of summer love—a theme at the heart of my memoir Out East. I chose books that capture the "fever dream highs" of the season. But at the same time, as Taylor sings, "Summer's a knife," filled with longing and heartache, primed for nostalgia. All of these books carry the kind of moonlit shimmer I crave in a smart beach read. As a Swiftie, a beach lover, an avid reader, and a hopeless romantic, I hope you enjoy.
This book comes out in May, and I devoured an advance copy in two awestruck sittings.
I was completely bowled over by the gorgeously evocative, lyrically taut writing. But the characters—two sisters from working-class Nantucket who are grappling with their mother’s deportation to Brazil—felt knowable, original, and unforgettable.
The summer they spend in this book is quite literally a cruel one as they grapple with their family’s separation. Yet somehow, Burnham manages to balance the intense reality of her character’s circumstances with dream-like sentences that capture the hidden beauty woven into everyday life.
A young woman reunites with her teenage sister in their childhood home on Nantucket Island after their mother disappears in this alluring coming-of-age novel from the acclaimed author of It Is Wood, It Is Stone.
“A novel to remember.”—Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different
Elise is out dancing the night before her college graduation when her younger sister, Sophie, calls to tell her that their mom is nowhere to be found. Elise leaves on the next flight back to her childhood home, Nantucket Island, for the first time in nearly four years.
Hi! I'm John Glynn, and I'm excited to share some book recommendations inspired by one of my favorite Taylor Swift songs, "Cruel Summer." To me, this song perfectly encapsulates the heightened emotions of summer love—a theme at the heart of my memoir Out East. I chose books that capture the "fever dream highs" of the season. But at the same time, as Taylor sings, "Summer's a knife," filled with longing and heartache, primed for nostalgia. All of these books carry the kind of moonlit shimmer I crave in a smart beach read. As a Swiftie, a beach lover, an avid reader, and a hopeless romantic, I hope you enjoy.
Yes, this is a book with “Christmas” in the title. Yes, it mostly takes place in the winter, not the summer. But you can practically hear the main character shouting the lyrics from Cruel Summer’s bridge, “I love you ain’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard,” as she attempts to cling to the chosen family that has brought her comfort over the course of her twenties.
This is a book I’d read any time of year and one that carries the huge feelings and high-stakes drama of the best Taylor Swift songs. I loved it.
From bookfluencer and host of the BAD ON PAPER podcast, a riotous holiday rom-com about four friends in NYC who hold onto their unconventional Christmas tradition even when their paths diverge—but the changes they fear might be exactly what they need…
Hannah and Finn have spent every Christmas together since college. Neither has anywhere else to go—Hannah’s parents died, and Finn’s disowned him when he came out. Their tradition of offbeat holiday adventures only grows more outrageous with time. When the pair starts their adult lives in New York City, they add stylish Priya and mysterious Theo to the group,…
Tahir Shah has spent his professional life searching for the hidden underbelly of lands through which he travels. In doing so he often uncovers layers of life that most other writers hardly even realise exist. With a world-wide following, Tahir’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages, in hundreds of editions. His documentaries have been screened on National Geographic TV, The History Channel, Channel 4, and in cinemas the world over. The son of the writer and thinker Idries Shah, Tahir was born into a prominent Anglo-Afghan family, and seeks to bridge East with West through his work.
Good writers of historical fiction blend layers of fact and fantasy together into an irresistible kaleidoscope. The very best of them are time travellers. And, that’s what Jane Johnson certain is… for her magical novel, set in the days of Sultan Moulay Ismail, sucks the reader back through centuries to a time when the Barbary Coast was a wild rumpus of a place – peppered with palaces and pirates, treasure, secrets, intrigue, and danger. I love this book because it’s not a dry historical read, so much as an intricate observation on the relationship between people, both elegant and deeply touching.
The author of The Salt Road and The Tenth Gift Jane Johnson returns with a captivating historical novel set in Morocco, The Sultan's Wife.
The year is 1677. Behind the magnificent walls and towering arches of the Palace of Meknes, captive chieftain's son and now a lowly scribe, Nus Nus is framed for murder. As he attempts to evade punishment for the bloody crime, Nus Nus finds himself trapped in a vicious plot, caught between the three most powerful figures in the court: the cruel and arbitrary Sultan Moulay Ismail, one of the most tyrannical rulers in history; his monstrous…
I am a history professor who is drawn to history out of a love of recovering and making accessible otherwise forgotten voices and stories of the past. I’m especially interested in relationships between Jews and Muslims and how they’ve dealt with minorityhood, displacement, colonialism, and modernization. I’ve written four books, two focusing on Muslims and two on Jews, as well as numerous articles. Among my greatest pleasures as a scholar is seeing my readers begin with an interest in the stories of one religious group (either Muslims or Jews) and then become so curious about the drama, joy, and conflicts of the era that they become interested in the stories of the other as well.
Alma Heckman’sThe Sultan’s Communistsuses the life stories of five prominent Moroccan Jewish communists to paint a complex picture of Jewish identity in twentieth-century Morocco. By documenting their struggles, Heckman details the often surprising ways in which Moroccan Jews negotiated their political environment and mediated between Moroccan patriotism, French colonialism, radical politics, Arab and Jewish identity, and Zionism. She also describes the ways in which the Moroccan sultan reimagined his relationship with the country’s Jews and the surprising history of how and why he ultimately came to embrace Jewish communists, who, to begin with, had been the subject of severe repression, including imprisonment and exile.
The Sultan's Communists uncovers the history of Jewish radical involvement in Morocco's national liberation project and examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves participating as citizens in a newly-independent Morocco. Closely following the lives of five prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists (Leon Rene Sultan, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham Serfaty, Simon Levy, and Sion Assidon), Alma Rachel Heckman describes how Moroccan Communist Jews fit within the story of mass Jewish exodus from Morocco in the 1950s and '60s, and how they survived oppressive post-independence authoritarian rule under the Moroccan monarchy to ultimately become heroic emblems of state-sponsored Muslim-Jewish tolerance.
I love to cook and it’s difficult to find something beyond chicken and salad when you’re trying to lose weight. Over the years I’ve assembled a cookbook library that covers many topics (interested in how the Georgians ate green beans? I can help you out!), many of them as off-topic from weight-loss as my cookie cookbook collection. But I still return to what I call “abstinent” favorites, simply because they are so tasty.
These are one-pot meals that have extremely clean ingredients. Many of the recipes will call for couscous, which is a high-gluten marriage of wheat and semolina wheat, so you may want to put that rice cooker to work. Other than that, this is tasty, spicy, soul-warming food not always available in a big town like Missoula, Montana.
These hearty one-pot meals, flavoured with fragrant spices, are cooked and served from an elegant, specially designed cooking vessel, also called a tagine. In Ghillie Basan's collection of deliciously authentic recipes you will find some of the best-loved classics of the Moroccan kitchen.
Try the sumptuous Lamb Tagine with Dates, Almonds and Pistachios, and the tangy Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemon, Green Olives and Thyme. Also included are less traditional but equally delicious recipes for beef and fish - try Beef Tagine with Sweet Potatoes, Peas and Ginger or a tagine of Monkfish, Potatoes, Tomatoes and Black Olives. Hearty vegetable…
I have always been fascinated by stories where everyday people are thrust into dangerous situations through no fault of their own. I’ve often wondered how I would react in such a situation. To me, it’s like going off to war. How would I react? Would I shrink away from danger or stand up like a man and do what I could to save myself and others around me? I’ve always found it interesting to write about everyday people who rise to the occasion and rely on their wits to extricate themselves from danger. I find myself rooting for them, urging them to find some inner strength they didn’t even know they had.
This book is emblematic of the struggles that are inherent in any marriage. Robin is an accountant, and Paul is an artist eighteen years her senior. When Paul disappears during a trip to Morocco meant to save their marriage, Robin looks for him and discovers things she wishes she hadn’t.
With all the obstacles and secrets she uncovers, Robin has to decide if staying with Paul is worth the pain. As a reader, I found myself fighting along with Robin as she scoured the landscape of Morocco in her search for her husband. She proves to be a survivor, fighting in dangerous situations against people who cheat, lie, and try to exploit her naiveté. If you like flawed characters and crazy turns of events, you’ll like this book.
From the #1 internationally bestselling author of The Moment and Five Days comes “the best book about Morocco since The Sheltering Sky. Completely absorbing and atmospheric” (Philip Kerr).
Robin knew Paul wasn’t perfect. But he said they were so lucky to have found each other, and she believed it was true.
She is a meticulous accountant, almost forty. He is an artist and university professor, twenty years older. When Paul suggests a month in Morocco, where he once lived and worked, a place where the modern meets the medieval, Robin reluctantly agrees.
Once immersed into the swirling, white hot exotica…
I’ve always been interested in food, even as young as 3 years old I remember wanting to taste everything, and I found the process of cooking fascinating. But I really got interested in food as a topic for research during my time studying Greek culture for my PhD thesis. People on the island of Kalymnos, where I’ve conducted research for 30 years, made a strong connection between food and memory, but it was a connection that few scholars have written about until recently. So I’ve been excited to participate in a new field reflected by all of these books, and hope you will be as well.
This book tells the story of the transmission and learning of cooking knowledge and skill in Morocco.
What makes it stand out for me is not only the focus on multisensory experience, but the way the author provides an account of her own process of learning to cook, and learning to know what cooking is, as part of her apprenticeship to Marrakchi women.
Graf takes us into the lives of three Marrakchi women and their families, illustrating their struggles and the power that they deploy through cooking. Food and Families in the Making thus makes for a moving account of sensuous scholarship.
Even in the context of rapid material and social change in urban Morocco, women, and especially those from a low-income household, continue to invest a lot of work in preparing good food for their families. Through the lens of domestic food preparation, this book looks at knowledge reproduction on how we know cooking and its role in the making of everyday family life. It also examines a political economy of cooking that situates Marrakchi women's lived experience in the broader context of persisting poverty and food insecurity in Morocco.
When I say I enjoy stories of ordinary people in extraordinary situations, I’m talking about characters who don’t have law enforcement or Special Forces training, who aren’t martial arts experts, KGB agents, or CIA officers. I like those characters too, but they typically engage my head, not my heart. Thrown into dangerous situations, “ordinary” individuals can show tremendous courage and quick-wittedness. I can easily put myself in their shoes and empathize with their plight, which gives me a real stake in the story’s outcome. If a story is well-written, the creative ways characters respond and the strengths they discover within themselves make them true heroes to me.
Two American housewives—sisters—are on vacation in Morocco (a place I’ve really enjoyed visiting) and one of them disappears. Her sister is determined to find her, but neither has any preparation for the dangers they face. A foreign setting is mysterious, exotic, and always holds unknown possibilities. Finding themselves in a rural area, the women don’t know whom to trust, and they cannot rely on the usual social safeguards. The police and military are actually a threat. For me, a standalone thriller like this packs extra tension because you can’t be certain the characters will survive!
These two sisters are about to be permanently "disappeared"
Julie Welch's sister, Fay Lariviere, disappears from their hotel in Morocco. Although she leaves a note that she'll be back in two days, Fay doesn't return.
Julie's anger shifts to worry—and to fear when she discovers a stalker. Then, an attack meant for Julie kills another woman. Searching Fay's luggage and quizzing the hotel staff, Julie discovers Fay's destination—a remote village in the Saharan desert. Convinced her sister is in danger and propelled by her own jeopardy, Julie rushes to warn Fay.
