Absolument's Book List: Readings on my "OUI" list

Books about artists in love, architectural feats, and dressing the cast of Sex and the City.

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Reading is one of my favorite parts of being alive. It calms me and reminds me that there is an infinite amount of activity, wonder, and imagination out there—and a bottomless list of subjects to learn about. What a marvelous world we live in! What beautiful creations humans have made—books! Here’s a very short list of art, design, and architecture books that I adore, plus a few that are sitting on my shelves (that I hope to get to one of these days).

A little * denotes that I haven’t started or finished this book—yet.

The Enchanting Stories of Art and Design

• The Lives of the Surrealists by Desmond Morris

• Anni Albers On Weaving by Anni Albers and Nicholas Fox Weber

• Ninth Street Women: Five Painters and the Movement that Changed Modern Art by Mary Gabriel

• The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal

• The Lives of Lee Miller by Anthony Penrose

• The World of Charles and Ray Eames

• *The Slip: The New York City Street that Changed American Art Forever by Prudence Peiffer

• The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s by Maggie Doherty

• Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi by Hayden Herrera

• You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin by Rachel Corbett

• *O’Keeffe & Stieglitz: An American Romance by Benita Eisler

• *Josef Albers and Wassily Kandinsky: Friends in Exile by Jessica Boise and Nicholas Fox Weber

• *Modernism and the Mediterranean: The Maeght Foundation by Jan K. Birksted

• *Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington by Joanna Moorhead

• *Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction by Lynne Olson

• *The Woman Who Says No: Françoise Gilot on her Life With and Without Picasso by Malte Herwig

• Building: A Carpenter’s Notes on Life and the Art of Good Work by Mark Ellison

• *Camille Pissarro: The Audacity of Impressionism by Anka Muhlstein

Modern Architecture Muses

• *Lineage and Legacy: A Certain Modernism in Cadaqués by Steven Bates

• Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader by Esther McCoy and Susan Morgan

• *When Eero Met his Match by Eva Hagberg

• Modern Originals by Leslie Williamson

• Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright by Paul Hendrickson

Fiction

• The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali

• If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino

• The Orange Girl by Jostein Gaarder

• Honeymoon by Patrick Modiano

• The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

More Curiosities

• *The Postcard by Anne Berest

• *Pat in the City: My Life of Fashion, Style, and Breaking All the Rules by Patricia Field

• *The Impudent Ones by Marguerite Duras

• *Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik

xx

Happy reading and learning and expanding!

Kelsey Rose

PS - A number of these books above are linked to Bookshop.org, which is my absolute favorite place to buy books online. Bookshop.org works to connect readers with independent booksellers and stores all over the world. Since 2020, they’ve raised more than $28 million for independent bookstores—which is 28 million times better than supporting Amazon. You can see/shop my Bookshop here! I do get a teeny, tiny commission off of every book sale purchased directly from these links or from my Bookshop store front. I’ll only link books if I honestly believe in their goodness.