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David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

By January 11, 2016January 9th, 2018Reading Habits

The legendary musician and fashion chameleon David Bowie passed away yesterday 10/01/16. His passing has shocked and upset fans and admirers from across the globe and his cross generational appeal is well documented.

What people may not be aware of though was that he was an avid reader and on his Facebook page of October 2nd 2013 he posted a list of his top 100 books of all time.

Here they are in their entirety.

Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
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Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
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Room At The Top by John Braine
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On Having No Head by Douglas Harding
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Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
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A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
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City Of Night by John Rechy
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The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
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Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
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Iliad by Homer
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As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
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Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
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Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
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Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
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Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
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Halls Dictionary Of Subjects & Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
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David Bomberg by Richard Cork
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Blast by Wyndham Lewis
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Passing by Nella Larson
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Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
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The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
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In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
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Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
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The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
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The Stranger by Albert Camus
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Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
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The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
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The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
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Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
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The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
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The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodieby by Muriel Spark
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Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
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Herzog by Saul Bellow
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Puckoon by Spike Milligan
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Black Boy by Richard Wright
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The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
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Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
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The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
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McTeague by Frank Norris
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Money by Martin Amis
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The Outsider by Colin Wilson
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Strange People by Frank Edwards
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English Journey by J.B. Priestley
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A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
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The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
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1984 by George Orwell
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The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
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Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
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Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
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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

I think we can all agree that the world is a little less colourful today. RIP David Bowie; you rocked!

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