100 books like Toulouse-Lautrec

I’ll end with a book that started it all for me!

I still remember, in the year 2010, reaching the end of the essay "Goodbye to All That" where the date of publication is noted—1967—and how startled I was to realize something that feels so contemporary and alive had been written decades earlier. As in so much of her work, in this collection Didion offers vivid details from her life and brings her extraordinary powers of analysis to understanding their meaning.

As she once put it herself—in another essay, "Why I Write"—"Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means.”

Gary Lucas is best known for his guitar wizardry in Captain Beefheart and for his dazzling guitar riffs that create the spine for Jeff Buckley’s hits, “Grace” and “Mojo Pin,” but I know him personally as an intelligent, highly-observant raconteur who has a mordant way of conveying the absurdity that exists within the music business. He deftly captures the lifeblood and pulse that comes with writing, collaborating creating music, which, itself, is always the joy. Touched by Grace offers a glimpse into his unforgettable collaboration with the charismatic singer Jeff Buckley in his band Gods & Monsters, from their first performance together in 1991 on through the stunning news of the singer’s tragic drowning in Memphis in 1997.

A famous painter’s cookbook? If you didn’t think artists eat, think again, and start by Googling images of Monet’s kitchen at his house in Giverny. (I said eat, not cook.) Written by the wife of Madame Monet’s great-grandson, this book offers you beautiful photographs of this artwork along with diary accounts of his family life and an opportunity to understand one of the great Impressionist artists through the dishes that his wife and family prepared, including his favorite, richly green-hued pistachio cake. 

Mazzeo’s book provides fascinating insight into a perfume that has enjoyed insane sales longevity when most tend to fade from the market. The book offers a portrait of the orphaned young woman’s convent upbringing to her days as a chanteuse and milliner to her rise in society as a fashion designer. Some say Chanel No. 5 resulted from a happy fluke of dumping too much aliphatic aldehydes into the juice, yet it became instantly iconic as the first clean, modern perfume, one that did not fall into the established vamp/ingenue fragrance categories of the day.  It reached iconic status during WWII as a tax-free product sold in military commissaries around the world. Not all smells sweet: Coco proved to be a Nazi sympathizer in a failed attempt to regain control of her business.    

At fifty-one years old, Manet died too young of the ravages of syphilis. This intimate first-person account details the last three years of Manet’s life (1880-83). Eleven real Manet sketches add visual context. The core of the journal covers Manet’s race to keep painting while the disease disables him more and more with no cure in sight. He writes of past loves, friends, clients, models, and earlier adventures. Manet comes across as deeply insightful with no regrets, no self-pity, and as always obsessed to sketch and paint any subject that interests him. He finishes some of his finest creations during this brutally hard time, including probably his most popular piece, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.

A twenty year old American woman goes to Paris to paint, meets a French artist, marries, has a child, and together buy a farmhouse and make a summer home and art studios in rural Brittany: that story. A memoir. 

The book was published in 2008, but the story takes place in the early 1960s when rural Brittany was closer to the 19th century than the 21st. I was in Paris in 1967, and it was still possible to rent a hotel room for under five dollars a night, to travel in Europe for ten dollars a day. In 1967, you could not safely drink the water in France, including in Paris, and you had to have proof of a typhus vaccine to return to the U.S. It was still more Henry Miller’s Paris than Macron’s.

This was the time of the last of every day berets, blue… show more.

Why a book on Toulouse-Lautrec on a booklist about southern France? I might have asked myself that same question before visiting the region.

In the city of Albi, attached to the amazing 14th Century medieval cathedral there, I happened into the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum and learned he was born and raised in the town. After his death, his mother assembled the largest collection of his works, which are housed at this location. I became fascinated by his troubled and unusual life and followed him to Paris and the Moulin Rouge, where he became a famous Impressionist painter and pioneer of poster prints. 

This collection of essays by several experts deals not only with his unique early life, physical handicaps, and amazing, if troubled and short, career as an artist but also delves into the larger scene of turn-of-the-century Paris in 1900 at a time when the world of art was… show more.

This is the most touching love story I have ever read. I do not tend to read period dramas, and so I was hesitant to read a book set during the first world war. However, this book had me in tears so many times. I read this book over ten years ago, yet it is still my favorite love story of all time to date. Beautiful, just beautiful.

Every Bond book has a London connection. You could put almost any Bond book on this list, but I chose this one because it is the first.

I feel a sense of connection to the protagonist and the city because this is where the missions originate. Even as the story plays out in northern France, communication with London is key, and I feel it.

Pauline Baer de Perignon doesn’t hold anything back – she puts her ego aside as she shares her secret ambitions, doubts and insecurities, triumphs and frustrations on her mission to uncover a distressing chapter in her family’s history. The rhythm and pace are indicative of a book translated from the French - a slow-moving train rather than a speeding locomotive, but that just enhanced the feeling of accompanying the author on her passionate yet painful quest in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.