Bowie is said to have read a book a day. Top that Infomaniac Book Challengers!
Bowie called “reading” his gateway activity to emotional ecstasy.
The following is a list of David Bowie's 100 favourite books, in no particular order:
Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Room At The Top by John Braine
On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
City Of Night by John Rechy
The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Iliad by Homer
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
David Bomberg by Richard Cork
Blast by Wyndham Lewis
Passing by Nella Larson
Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Herzog by Saul Bellow
Puckoon by Spike Milligan
Black Boy by Richard Wright
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
McTeague by Frank Norris
Money by Martin Amis
The Outsider by Colin Wilson
Strange People by Frank Edwards
English Journey by J.B. Priestley
A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
1984 by George Orwell
The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
Beano (comic, ’50s)
Raw (comic, ’80s)
White Noise by Don DeLillo
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
The Street by Ann Petry
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
The Bridge by Hart Crane
All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Teenage by Jon Savage
Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Viz (comic, early ’80s)
Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
Inferno by Dante Alighieri
A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
The Insult by Rupert Thomson
In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
Note: Thanks to LX for telling us about this book list.
Yay! First!
ReplyDeleteAlthough, maybe I don't deserve "First" as I haven't read any of these books...?
::considers quitting work to enable more reading time::
The Mistress has read 20 books on this list...a mere fraction.
DeleteAnd there's a few I haven't even heard of before!
Your fraction is still quite a sizeable one fifth. I think that certifies you as well read!
DeleteI must admit, most of these I haven't heard of. Of the few that I have, the Iliad may be one that I read this year - I'm pretty sure there's a copy on my Kindle.
MR. DeVICE: I’ve read the Illiad and the Odyssey, although not in the original language.
DeleteI think I might have to strike “learning Ancient Greek” off my list if I want to get through the 2016 Infomaniac Book Challenge.
Five.
ReplyDeletePS: Do Dions die in threes? [braces self]
LX: She was the youngest of 14 children so there could be more to come.
DeleteDid you mean this comment for the previous post?
*wonders if LX had too many Ziggy Stardust cocktails*
I've only read seven things on Mr B's list (and three of those are magazines, which probably don't really count)... Jx
ReplyDeleteJON: If magazines count for Bowie, they count for you too...
DeleteExcept for when it comes to the 2016 Infomaniac Book Challenge.
Especially not Vulcan or Femme Mimics. Jx
DeleteJON: Of course, you read Vulcan just for the articles.
Delete“Santa’s Xmas Boy Babes,” indeed.
Always well thumbed. Jx
DeleteI have read 9 of them... including the comics... I own another couple of them, so maybe I ought to get stuck in.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't read a book a day... I need a period of mourning before starting a new book.
Sx
MISS SCARLET: I could easily read a book a day but I’d need to hire more houseboys to do the washing up and such.
DeleteI like to give a little time between books to ponder the one I've finished. But yesterday, I didn't last 5 minutes between finishing one and starting another. Public transit will do that to you.
That is quite an impressive list. I've read the Iliad and On the road and Inferno--books on adventures & spirituality in traveling. I passed on The Great Gatsby, 1984, A clockwork orange, and In cold blood--It was when I was avoiding reading dystopian & depressing novels. Oddly enough, I saw the movie versions of these books.
ReplyDeleteEROS: “Never judge the book by its movie.”
DeleteWhich film version of The Great Gatsby did you see? I believe there have been three but I’m losing count.
I think it's impossible to accurately and successfully take a story from a book and put it on the screen--some things just can't be translated nor transferred across mediums without loss or changes, and that's ok.
DeleteI saw the Robert Redford & Mia Farrow version and I thought, "Man, this movie is long." Not a good sign if I think the time I used to watch the movie would've been better spent on reading the book the movie was based on. I've not seen the Leonardo Dicaprio version; I think I'll read the book first then see it.
EROS: I had to turn off the Leonardo Dicaprio version of The Great Gatsby after 20 minutes. Not recommended by The Mistress.
Deletei'm sure david would've been flattered that you posted this list.
ReplyDeleteNORMA: I think I saw his constellation shining in approval.
DeleteI've read six on the list, two of which are comics. Are we to compile a list of our own favourite 100 books?
ReplyDeleteMITZI: Compile your own list? Not necessary but The Mistress wouldn’t dream of holding you back.
DeleteThe only requirement for the 2016 Infomaniac Book Challenge is to READ MORE BOOKS! It’s a personal challenge rather than a competition. Even one book every couple of months is better than none.
Interesting list. Christa Wolf ? Well well ... Döblin, some Orwell, Bellow - the rest I don't know.
ReplyDeleteJessica Mitford - ?
The Iliad ? Today I'd touch it only in a good translation. Has some drive from the start, den ZORN mir singe oh Muse, it's an Italo Western.
MAGO: “The American Way of Death” by Jessica Mitford was a 1963 exposé of the funeral industry. She was an excellent investigative journalist.
DeleteI just finished reading a book of her essays, “Poison Penmanship.”
I love you.
DeleteIch liebe dich... that sounds a lot like "I love dick."
Delete