100 books like Sonia Delaunay

By Anne Montfort,

Here are 100 books that Sonia Delaunay fans have personally recommended if you like Sonia Delaunay. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy

Cat Bennett Author Of The Confident Creative: Drawing to Free the Hand and Mind

From my list on art and creativity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been an artist all my life. In childhood, I was always drawing and after graduating from university I became an illustrator doing hundreds of drawings for major newspapers and publishers in the United States for over 25 years. It was my mission, no matter what was going on in the world, to find some humor and lightness to share through my drawings. About 15 years ago, I also began to teach drawing to adults and was amazed to discover that everyone can draw. When I saw how people seemed to become happier and bolder making art I became passionate about sharing how we can grow our creativity by developing an art practice. It makes for a beautiful life and quite possibly a more beautiful world.

Cat's book list on art and creativity

Cat Bennett Why did Cat love this book?

I adore David Hockney. He draws so beautifully, and in so many different ways, and is always inventive in his art-making. He makes me see more through his art and was a major inspiration for me when I was starting out as an editorial illustrator years ago. This book is a 2020 pandemic conversation between Hockney, now living in Normandy, and his good friend, the art critic Martin Gayford in the UK. It really speaks to the devotion that artists have to observing life and creating something beautiful from it. I love the joy Hockney brings to his work and see that as a powerful energy to create from.

By David Hockney, Martin Gayford,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Spring Cannot Be Cancelled as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life.'

DAVID HOCKNEY

Praise for Spring Cannot be Cancelled:

'This book is not so much a celebration of spring as a springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light. It is scholarly, thoughtful and provoking'…


Book cover of David Hockney: Drawing from Life

Cat Bennett Author Of The Confident Creative: Drawing to Free the Hand and Mind

From my list on art and creativity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been an artist all my life. In childhood, I was always drawing and after graduating from university I became an illustrator doing hundreds of drawings for major newspapers and publishers in the United States for over 25 years. It was my mission, no matter what was going on in the world, to find some humor and lightness to share through my drawings. About 15 years ago, I also began to teach drawing to adults and was amazed to discover that everyone can draw. When I saw how people seemed to become happier and bolder making art I became passionate about sharing how we can grow our creativity by developing an art practice. It makes for a beautiful life and quite possibly a more beautiful world.

Cat's book list on art and creativity

Cat Bennett Why did Cat love this book?

This is a purely visual book of portraits by David Hockney from the beginning of his career until he is nearly 80. It’s full of different styles of drawing and painting and, for that reason, is the kind of book that stimulates visual ideas and makes me want to go straight to the drawing board. In other words, it really gets us thinking in some new ways about how we interpret the world around us in drawing and painting. It’s a good reminder of the pleasures of looking and making.

By David Hockney (illustrator), Sarah Howgate,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked David Hockney as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book, which accompanies the first major exhibition devoted to David Hockney's drawings inover 20 years,will explore Hockney as a draughtsman from the 1950s to now, with a focus on himself, his family and friends. From Ingres to the iPad -this book demonstrates the artist's ingenuity in portrait drawing with reference to both tradition and technology.

David Hockney is recognised as one of the master draughtsmen of our times and a champion of the medium. This book will feature Hockney's work from the 1950s to now and focus on his depictions of himself and a smaller group of sitters close…


Book cover of Feck Perfuction: Dangerous Ideas on the Business of Life

Cat Bennett Author Of The Confident Creative: Drawing to Free the Hand and Mind

From my list on art and creativity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been an artist all my life. In childhood, I was always drawing and after graduating from university I became an illustrator doing hundreds of drawings for major newspapers and publishers in the United States for over 25 years. It was my mission, no matter what was going on in the world, to find some humor and lightness to share through my drawings. About 15 years ago, I also began to teach drawing to adults and was amazed to discover that everyone can draw. When I saw how people seemed to become happier and bolder making art I became passionate about sharing how we can grow our creativity by developing an art practice. It makes for a beautiful life and quite possibly a more beautiful world.

Cat's book list on art and creativity

Cat Bennett Why did Cat love this book?

Artist, designer, writer James Victore urges us to be ourselves without hesitation. Artists don’t fit in, we can’t. We’re observers and makers and require a certain distance from the mainstream to refine our vision and do our work. But we can be afraid to express ourselves fully and stand out from the crowd. This book dishes out confidence like candy. It’s a great place to replenish flagging spirits when they descend as they will from time to time. It’s energizing and makes you want to open your eyes and do what you can to further the unfolding of your truth and spirit. Written in short pithy chapters, you can dip in and out of it whenever you need a boost.

By James Victore,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Feck Perfuction as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"James Victore is a dangerous man. His ideas on optimizing your creativity, doing wow work and building a life that inspires will devastate your limits. And show you how to win. Read this book fast."
-Robin Sharma, #1 bestselling author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

Begin before you're ready.

Renowned designer and professional hell-raiser James Victore wants to drag you off your couch and throw you headfirst into a life of bold creativity. He'll guide you through all the twists, trials, and triumphs of starting your creative career, from finding your voice to picking the right moment to…


Book cover of Stranger Than Kindness

Cat Bennett Author Of The Confident Creative: Drawing to Free the Hand and Mind

From my list on art and creativity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been an artist all my life. In childhood, I was always drawing and after graduating from university I became an illustrator doing hundreds of drawings for major newspapers and publishers in the United States for over 25 years. It was my mission, no matter what was going on in the world, to find some humor and lightness to share through my drawings. About 15 years ago, I also began to teach drawing to adults and was amazed to discover that everyone can draw. When I saw how people seemed to become happier and bolder making art I became passionate about sharing how we can grow our creativity by developing an art practice. It makes for a beautiful life and quite possibly a more beautiful world.

Cat's book list on art and creativity

Cat Bennett Why did Cat love this book?

While Nick Cave is primarily a musician/songwriter, this book is a visual record of Cave’s creative journey filled with his early sketchbooks, photos, drawings, and typewritten song lyrics annotated by hand. Many of us artists work in sketchbooks where we can feel free to be messy and exploratory and pour our hearts onto the page. Some of us need words as well as images to explore the world around us, decipher our feelings and uncover our work. I love musing over Nick’s here—so messy and wild to begin and a little more ordered as he ages as one might expect. The book is filled with photos of different parts of his life, drawings and doodles, tight handwritten scripts and taped over typewritten lyrics gone yellow with age. It’s a compendium of a wonderful artist’s creative process. A real joy to sit down with and muse over.

By Nick Cave,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Stranger Than Kindness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Stranger Than Kindness is a journey in images and words into the creative world of musician, storyteller and cultural icon Nick Cave.

This highly collectable book invites the reader into the innermost core of the creative process and paves the way for an entirely new and intimate meeting with the artist, presenting Cave's life, work and inspiration and exploring his many real and imagined universes. It features full colour reproductions of original artwork, handwritten lyrics, photographs and collected personal artefacts along with commentary and meditations from Nick Cave, Janine Barrand and Darcey Steinke.

Stranger Than Kindness…


Book cover of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Mark Rowlands Author Of Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness

From my list on humans and other animals.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Mark's book list on humans and other animals

Mark Rowlands Why did Mark love this book?

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.

By Rainer Maria Rilke, Burton Pike (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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.


Book cover of Kylie the Crocodile in Paris

Katelyn Aronson Author Of Piglette

From my list on children’s fiction books featuring plenty of French flavor.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an American children’s author and expat living in France. Holding a bilingual master’s from La Sorbonne University in Paris, I now teach both English and French as foreign languages to children and adults of all ages. A Francophile since my very first French lessons back in high school, I now enjoy French citizenship and am happy to be “living my best life” between my two countries. I am passionate about promoting literacy and the languages I hold dear.

Katelyn's book list on children’s fiction books featuring plenty of French flavor

Katelyn Aronson Why did Katelyn love this book?

I bought this book during a weekend trip to Paris, and it turned out to be my favorite souvenir.

The author and illustrator are a husband and wife team, and they’ve cooked up a lovely character in Kylie, who is based on a real-life crocodile found once upon a time in the canals of Paris!

By Oliver Gee, Lina Nordin Gee (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Kylie the Crocodile in Paris as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This children's book follows the story of Kylie, a crocodile that lives in the Canal Saint-Martin of Paris. She explores Paris secretly by day, watching people from the safety of storm drains (can you find her on every page?).

At night, she sneaks out of the canal, via the sewers, and into some of the most famous places in Paris like the Louvre Museum and the big department stores.

Written and illustrated by Paris couple Oliver and Lina Gee, you'll surely delight in Paris as seen from the eyes of a crocodile. Don't miss the informative and fun Paris facts…


Book cover of That's Paris: An Anthology of Life, Love and Sarcasm in the City of Light

Janna Graber Author Of A Pink Suitcase: 22 Tales of Women's Travel

From my list on travel for women.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Janna's book list on travel for women

Janna Graber Why did Janna love this book?

This book is for those who love Paris or even just the dream of Paris. In this collection of fiction and non-fiction tales, a diverse group of writers take the reader to unexpected sides of the City of Lights, with a diverse array of experiences, from a romantic encounter to a heartbreaking mishap. In this enjoyable collection of tales, you can travel to Paris, if only for an evening.

By Vicki Lesage, Adria J. Cimino, Marie Vareille , Didier Quemener , Jennie Goutet , April Lily Heise , Lisa Webb , E.M. Stone , David Whitehouse

Why should I read it?

1 author picked That's Paris as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

That's Paris, a #1 Hot New Release in Essays & Travelogues, offers "a deep understanding of the enormous and beautiful complexity of Paris." - Global Living Magazine

If you've ever traveled to Paris or dreamed of setting foot on its cobblestone streets, you'll enjoy escaping into this collection of short fiction and nonfiction stories about France's famed capital. From culinary treats (and catastrophes) to swoon-worthy romantic encounters (and heartbreaking mishaps), this anthology takes you on a journey through one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Visit this cosmopolitan metropolis through the eyes of Parisians, Francophiles and travelers who…


Book cover of Village to Village: Misadventures in France

Jesse Fink Author Of The Eagle in the Mirror

From my list on books by Australian writers.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Jesse's book list on books by Australian writers

Jesse Fink Why did Jesse love this book?

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. 

By Alister Kershaw,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Village to Village as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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.…


Book cover of Zazie in the Metro

James W. Morris Author Of Rude Baby

From my list on literary fiction to laugh out loud.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a kid, I wrote a series of plays with my family as characters. Everyone (even the dog and cat) had lines that demonstrated their quirks, except me—the sane and reasonable one. When I performed these playlets for my mother (performing all parts, since no one else would co-operate) she laughed so hard she cried, and it’s fair to say my subsequent writing career has been an attempt to recapture the feelings that experience generated. Beginning as a joke writer (including a stint working for Jay Leno), I now focus on literary fiction, though humor is always a part of my work.

James' book list on literary fiction to laugh out loud

James W. Morris Why did James love this book?

I bought an English version of this French novel about Paris while actually in that city as a starving backpacker, and have forever associated the wacky joyfulness of the book with the pleasures of that trip. Originally written in a high-energy, idiomatic, slangy, bawdy version of French that scandalized many conservative readers, the plot involves a young country girl named Zazie, obsessed with the Parisian subway system called the Metro, though she’s never seen it. Finally allowed to visit her uncle in the city, she is outraged to find the Metro closed, its workers on strike. She runs away, roaming the crowded city streets, her hilarious extended tantrum not only upsetting her befuddled uncle’s safe and settled lifestyle, but also spreading a generalized craziness throughout Paris. 

By Raymond Queneau, Barbara Wright (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Zazie in the Metro as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with Gabriel, her female-impersonator uncle. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that becomes wilder and more manic by the minute. In 1960 Queneau's cult classic was made into a hugely successful film by Louis Malle. Packed full of word play and phonetic games, Zazie in the Metro remains as stylish and witty as ever.


Book cover of The Ballerinas

T. Greenwood Author Of The Still Point

From my list on both the darkness and beauty of ballet.

Why am I passionate about this?

When my daughter was three years old, I enrolled her in a “creative movement” class. I had taken dance lessons for ten years when I was younger, so this felt like an obvious choice. At age eleven, her teacher suggested that she had the facility, talent, and drive to pursue a career in ballet. What followed was seven years of being a “ballet mom,” as she studied, performed, competed, and ultimately left home to pursue her career. The Still Point comes from this experience. It's a novel about dark ambition, but it's also a love letter: to my daughter, to ballet, and to the mothers who became my closest friends inside the ballet studio walls.

T.'s book list on both the darkness and beauty of ballet

T. Greenwood Why did T. love this book?

This novel, besides having a gorgeous cover, offers a sneak peek through the window into the lives of professional dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet.

It follows three young women from their days as students into adulthood. The plot has many twists and turns, but it is primarily a novel about female relationships in the cutthroat world of professional ballet.

By Rachel Kapelke-Dale,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Ballerinas as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Thirteen years ago, Delphine Leger abandoned her prestigious soloist spot at the Paris Opera Ballet for a new life in St. Petersburg -- taking with her a secret that could upend the lives of her best friends, fellow dancers Lindsay and Margaux. Now thirty-six years old, Delphine has returned to her former home and to the legendary Palais Garnier Opera House, to choreograph the ballet that will kickstart the next phase of her career -- and, she hopes, finally make things right with her former friends. But Delphine quickly discovers that things have changed while she's been away...and some secrets…


5 book lists we think you will like!

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