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Fran Lebowitz's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Fran Lebowitz recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Fran Lebowitz's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

The Portable Dorothy Parker book cover1

The Portable Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker, Brendan Gill

4.5
This collection ranges over the verse, stories, essays, and journalism of one of the twentieth century's most quotable authors.
Fran Lebowitz portrait Recommended by Fran Lebowitz.
2

The Diaries of Dawn Powell: 1931-1965

Dawn Powell

4.4
Dawn Powell had a brilliant mind and a keen wit and her humor was never at a finer pitch than in her diaries. And yet her story is a poignant one – a son emotionally and mentally impaired, a household of too much alcohol and never enough money, and an artistic career that, if not a failure, fell far short of the success she craved. All is recorded here – along with working sketches for her novels,
Fran Lebowitz portrait Recommended by Fran Lebowitz.
3

Queer Street: Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-1985

James McCourt

3.1
A fierce critical intelligence animates every page of Queer Street. Its sentences are dizzying divagations. The postwar generation of queer New York has found a sophisticated bard singing 'the elders' history' (The New York Times). James McCourt's seminal Queer Street has proven unrivaled in its ability to capture the voices of a mad, bygone era. Beginning with the influx of liberated veterans int
Fran Lebowitz portrait Recommended by Fran Lebowitz.
4

Instant Lives And More

Howard Moss

3.3
A classic artistic parody from two of the world's most satiric minds. Moss uncovers remarkable historical anecdotes, which are accompanied by Gorey's absurdly deadpan drawings. Although the insightful scenarios involving Emily Dickinson, Mozart, Henrik Ibsen, and El Greco are all the product of Moss's fertile imagination, his uncanny emulation of style makes us believe they (just possibly) might b
Fran Lebowitz portrait Recommended by Fran Lebowitz.
5

Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay, with Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer

Ben Katchor

4.5
The classic graphic novel by the landmark cartoonist is back in print for its twenty-fifth anniversary

Cheap Novelties is an early testament to Ben Katchor's extraordinary prescience as both a gifted cartoonist and an astute urban chronicler. Rumpled, middle-aged Julius Knipl photographs a vanishing city--an urban landscape of low-rent apartment buildings, obsolete industries, monuments to forgotte
Fran Lebowitz portrait Recommended by Fran Lebowitz.