Bowie Bk Club

David Bowie was a great reader. In 2013, David Bowie compiled a list of his favourite 100 books, which was released by the curators of the ‘David Bowie is’ exhibition at the V&A Museum.

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The David Bowie.com website published the list here for anyone who wants to read them (#BowieBookClub) – so why not? Whenever I read or re-read one of them, I’ll link up on this page.

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Here they are – in alphabetical order by title:

  1. 1984 by George Orwell – reviewed 2008david-bowie-is-va
  2. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess – Book Group re-read 2018
  3. A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole – reviewed 2008
  4. A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
  5. A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
  6. A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
  7. All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
  8. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
  9. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
  10. Beano (comic, ’50s)
  11. Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
  12. Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
  13. Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
  14. Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
  15. Black Boy by Richard Wright
  16. Blast by Wyndham Lewis
  17. City Of Night by John Rechy
  18. Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
  19. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
  20. Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess – read pre-blog
  21. English Journey by J.B. Priestley
  22. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
  23. Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes – read pre-blog
  24. Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
  25. Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd – read pre-blog – re-read Jan 2018 – review
  26. Herzog by Saul Bellow
  27. Iliad by Homer – read pre-blog
  28. In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
  29. In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
  30. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
  31. Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
  32. Inferno by Dante Alighieri
  33. Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
  34. Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
  35. Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
  36. Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
  37. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
  38. Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr. – read pre-blogbowie-reading-1965
  39. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – read pre-blog
  40. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
  41. Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont
  42. McTeague by Frank Norris
  43. Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
  44. Money by Martin Amis –reviewed 2015
  45. Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
  46. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
  47. Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
  48. Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
  49. Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
  50. Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
  51. On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
  52. On The Road by Jack Kerouac – read pre-blog
  53. Passing by Nella Larson
  54. Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s) I subscribed in the 80s for a while.
  55. Puckoon by Spike Milligan
  56. Raw (comic, ’80s)
  57. Room At The Top by John Braine
  58. Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
  59. Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
  60. Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
  61. Strange People by Frank Edwards
  62. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick – read pre-blogmorley-bowie
  63. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
  64. Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
  65. Teenage by Jon Savage
  66. The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
  67. The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
  68. The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
  69. The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
  70. The Bridge by Hart Crane
  71. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
  72. The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
  73. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
  74. The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
  75. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
  76. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
  77. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – reviewed 2013
  78. The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
  79. The Insult by Rupert Thomson
  80. The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
  81. The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
  82. The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov – read pre-blog
  83. The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
  84. The Outsider by Colin Wilson
  85. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark – reviewed 2014
  86. The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
  87. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
  88. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
  89. The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
  90. The Stranger by Albert Camus
  91. The Street by Ann Petry
  92. bowie-vizThe Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
  93. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
  94. Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
  95. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh – reviewed Feb 2018
  96. Viz (comic, early ’80s) – Loved the Fat Slags!
  97. White Noise by Don DeLillo
  98. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon – read pre-blog
  99. Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
  100. Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton