Here are 100 books that The Ballerinas fans have personally recommended if you like
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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.
This luminous novel, written by former professional Joffrey Ballet dancer, Meg Howrey, follows the life of a dancer, beginning in NYC’s West Village in the 1980s.
It is a beautifully written rumination on not only dance but ambition, family, and secrets as well. Meg and I met for the first time when my daughter had just started on her pre-professional path, and her writing about dance is unmatched.
'A luminous chronicle of betrayal, sacrifice and creative ambition'
The Observer
'Lush and enjoyable... a glossy, fast-paced family drama'
The Times
'My idea of a perfect book'
Jami Attenberg
'By the book's close, readers will be clamouring for an extra curtain call'
Guardian
Once a year, ballet-obsessed Carlisle Martin spends a few precious weeks with her father Robert and his partner James at their enchanted apartment in Greenwich Village. Time spent with them is impossibly glamorous, filled with art, dance, beauty, books, and grown-ups who take her seriously as they battle the AIDs crisis and
Then, one summer, a devastating…
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.
Girl Through Glass offers readers entry into the magical and rarified world of an aspiring ballet dancer at the School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet.
For readers who love a gritty New York setting, glimpses behind the beautiful façade that ballet offers, and dark secrets, this novel has it all. Fans of My Dark Vanessa will also appreciate the #metoo elements of this story.
Long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
An Amazon Best Book of the Month
A Buzzfeed Most Exciting Book of the Year
A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year & Bestseller
Selected as a Skimm Read
A Refinery 29 Best Book of the Year
Chosen as a Rumpus Book Club Selection
Chosen as a Bustle Best Literary Debut Novel Written By Women in the Last 5 Years
An enthralling literary debut that tells the story of a young girl’s coming of age in the cutthroat world of New York City ballet—a story of obsession and the…
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.
This book! I received this gorgeous black and white photobook as a gift when I was an aspiring dancer myself in the 1970s.
I was obsessed with the story of a young girl cast as Marie in the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker. The story is told primarily through Krementz’s photos of a young dancer’s life in New York City: ballet classes, auditions, rehearsals, backstage moments, and performances.
This book is one of the most magical and special books of my childhood – which appealed to me as a dancer back then but later heavily influenced my work as a photographer as an adult.
A ten-year-old student at the School of American Ballet in New York describes her classes and the preparation for and performance of her role in the ballet "The Nutcracker."
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
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.
Ballet has come under much scrutiny in the last decade: from the perpetuation of racial stereotypes to the abuse of power by directors to the promotion of damaging physical behaviors.
This non-fiction book by a former student at the School of American Ballet balances the problematic elements of ballet with the author’s love affair with it. Filled with both history and her own personal story, I found this book to be not only educational but also deeply moving.
It will resonate with not only dancers but anyone who has abandoned a childhood passion.
"Neither romanticizing or decrying the dance world, Robb beautifully explores the push-pull of masochism and perfectionism—preoccupations not just relevant to aspiring dancers, but to anyone who's ever pursued an almost-impossible dream." ?— Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep and Also a Poet
An incisive exploration of ballet’s role in the modern world, told through the experience of the author and her classmates at the most elite ballet school in the country: the School of American Ballet.
Growing up, Alice Robb dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer. But by age fifteen, she had to face…
I grew up on fantasy stories, with Tolkien being the first author I can really remember loving. I have read widely in the genre and love to explore the subgenres of fantasy as well. I have a great group of writing partners and readers who discuss the fantasy and sci-fi genres with me at length. I think all great fantasy stories have some element of what it is to love or be loved and find a place in the world. I am an avid traveler as well and often dream up stories in far away places.
This book may fall more under dark fantasy and the adventure it takes you on is more emotionally invested rather than swords and sorcery.
But I love origin stories and Kay does a fantastic job creating a world with tragic heartbreak and undying love. This book is based on The Phantom of the Opera and delves deeper into Erik’s origins and how he came to haunt the opera house.
It’s fantasy because while based in reality, the author also weaves a subtle magic that takes us on an adventure into the far reaches of a dark genius’ mind.
"Phantom of the Opera fans no longer need to ponder what was in Erik's past, as Kay has created one for him in this deeply moving, poignant story. . . This sad, but beautiful, novel will be especially popular with [those] who have enjoyed the current musical . . . " – School Library Journal “A MUST READ! Haunting and riveting.”– Rave Reviews “Do we really need another spin-off of Gaston Leroux’s horror tale, The Phantom of the Opera? IF IT’S AS GOOD AS SUSAN KAY’S PHANTOM, YOU BET WE DO! – The Times Picayune “A VICTORY! STAYS WITH YOU…
I particularly enjoyed writing this book about a city that I love and have visited many times (starting in the late 1970s, when I was a student), and whose history I know well too. Most books, by foreigners anyway, talk about the city from a distance; I wanted to write something visceral, about sounds and smells as well as sights, and above all, how locals themselves think about their city, the way in which its intense and in some respects oppressive past shapes St Petersburg’s life today – yet all the same, never gets taken too seriously. Readers seem to agree: as well as an appreciative letter from Jan Morris, whose travel writing I’ve always admired, I treasure an email message from someone who followed my advice and tramped far and wide – before ending up in the room for prisoners’ relatives to drop off parcels at Kresty (the main city prison) when he wrongly assumed he was using an entrance to the (in fact non-existent) museum.
It’s hard these days to get a sense of what Leningrad looked like back in the 1960s and 1970s, and these photographs are also a tribute to the alternative art of that era: grainy black-and-white-images of stray dogs on rubbish tips, drunks in backyards, dilapidated façades stretching along the eerie silver of canals. The photographers included (such as Boris Smelov, Lev Zviagin, Slava Mikhailov, Boris Kudryakov and Olga Korsunova) aren’t nearly as well-known as they should be, and are as interesting in their way as the ubiquitous Boris Mikhailov. For a comparable figure who isn’t included in Val’ran’s book because her work was only discovered recently, see this site with Masha Ivashintsova’s work, curated by her daughter.
Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: “Are his love songs closer to heaven than dying?” Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard it…
P. I. Tchaikovsky is a world-famous composer but few people know anything about him. Much of his life was hidden by the Soviet Union due to his homosexuality. As information finally came to light, the mystery of his death in 1893 became an obsession for me. The truth of it lies beyond the rumors of suicide or cholera, as particular circumstances exposed in my novel clearly show. I am a ballet historian and the writing of Fatewas an eight-year endeavor. Readers of Fate can now be the proverbial fly on the wall while Tchaikovsky lives his life and creates his major works.
If you've ever found yourself captivated by those colorful, romantic paintings of ballerinas by impressionist Edgar Degas, treat yourself to this fascinating novel. Ms. Wagner brings a particular dancer to life, along with her family, in this fictional account. The world of the Paris Opera in the nineteenth century is yours for the taking in this easy-to-read and very imaginative story. It had special meaning for me because I love that world and had never been immersed in it before.
In the City of Lights, at the dawn of a new age, begins an unforgettable story of great love, great art—and the most painful choices of the heart.
With this fresh and vibrantly imagined portrait of the Impressionist artist Edgar Degas, readers are transported through the eyes of a young Parisian ballerina to an era of light and movement. An ambitious and enterprising farm girl, Alexandrie joins the prestigious Paris Opera ballet with hopes of securing not only her place in society but her family’s financial future. Her plan is soon derailed, however, when she falls in love with the…
I’ve worked for two decades as a researcher and campaigner to expose the tax behaviour of unscrupulous multinational companies and wealthy individuals, and the central lesson is that we only make progress when the narrative shifts: when the public and policymakers start to appreciate just how much damage is done to our societies by the professional enablers of tax abuse. These books are real narrative-shifters, showing the world to us in ways we need to see, and making it a pleasure.
Eva Joly is one of the great heroes of tax justice, one of my heroes, a campaigning judge who faced down death threats in order to break the extraordinary corruption case of France’s biggest oil company.
But here, she joins forces with the novelist Judith Perrignon to tell a story of corruption that is sharp, ironic, and intelligent, as it runs from Lagos to London, by way of Paris and St Petersburg.
The head of the Nigerian fraud squad is evacuated from Lagos by secret-service operatives. Meanwhile a junior prosecutor in Nice probes the mysterious death of the wife of a powerful banker and a crusading journalist in St Petersburg pursues a corrupt oligarch and his criminal business empire. The paths of all three cross in London, where they find themselves embroiled in violent events obviously linked to financial and political interests and hunted by the oligarch's men, the Western secret services and goons sent by Nigerian oil magnates. A satirical, intelligent and fast-paced thriller set in the world of high finance…
Until I did my own animal-accompanied journey with Mollie and Peggy in 1984, my only association with animals on the trail was inadvertently with a collection of cockroaches in my backpack. It was when Bradt decided to add to their anthologies with a collection of stories about travelling with animals in 2018, Beastly Journeys, that I was able to read a wide variety of books on the topic. A delightful exercise!
I discovered this fascinating and extraordinary story when I was researching tales about travelling with animals for Beastly Journeys. Unlike the other four books in my list, this one has the animal as the central character. And what an animal! Zarafa was captured as a calf in what is now Ethiopia in a plan to cement relationships between the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt and Charles V of France. The year was 1826 and a giraffe had never before been seen in France. Zarafa did the first part of her journey strapped to the back on a camel, and then – surely more comfortably – down the Nile and across the Mediterranean on a brigantine.
A hole was cut in the deck which allowed Zarafa to travel with her body in the hold, while her head and neck enjoyed the human company on deck. From Marseille she was walked, with…
In October 1826, a ship arrived at Marseille carrying the first giraffe ever seen in France. A royal offering from Muhammad Ali, Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, to King Charles X, she had already traveled 2,000 miles down the Nile to Alexandria, from where she had sailed across the Mediterranean standing in the hold, her long neck and head protruding through a hole cut in the deck. In the spring of 1827, after wintering in Marseille, she was carefully walked 550 miles to Paris to the delight of thousands of onlookers.
The viceroy's tribute was politically motivated: He commanded the Turkish…
A life-changing tragedy. Conflicting memories. Is she a killer or a victim? Drawn From Life tells the story of a young woman driven to seek the truth about her traumatic past. As she sifts through the real and not-real landscapes of memory, she must re-examine her own agency in the…
I’m a historian specialising in the French Revolution at the University of Glasgow. During my doctorate, my now wife and I stayed in Ménilmontant in the 20th arrondissement. There grew a knowledge and love of Paris that have never diminished. As part of my research, I explore the places and spaces where events unfolded, trying to understand how these sites have since changed and been overwritten with new meanings and historical memories: I have the worn-out boots to show for it. I’m currently writing a book on Paris in the Belle Époque, from the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 to the outbreak of the First World War.
At first sight, the title evokes a certain Gallic hauteur, but it does not take long to see that this is simply a foretaste of the rich exploration of the myths of Paris – how the great city has been depicted, imagined, and perceived over time. This is the story of Paris as the capital of modernity, art, fashion, revolution, sex, pleasure, science, and crime. With writers, artists, poets, and visitors as witnesses, and lavishly illustrated, this is a colourful meander through the myths and illusions that have shaped the many images of Paris.
Whatever the actual realities beneath these multiple faces, asks Higonnet at one point, ‘who could, in our culturally unanchored world, imagine life without this city?’
In an original and evocative journey through modern Paris from the mid-eighteenth century to World War II, Patrice Higonnet offers a delightful cultural portrait of a multifaceted, continually changing city. He explores Paris as the capital of revolution, science, empire, literature, and art, describing such incarnations as Belle Epoque Paris, the Commune, the surrealists' city, and Paris as viewed through American eyes. He also evokes the more visceral Paris of alienation, crime, material excess, and sensual pleasure.
