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David Bowie: the man who loved books

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David Bowie: the man who loved books

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DAVID BOWIE IN 1995, READING A BOOK ABOUT FRANCIS BACON CREDIT: REX FEATURES

By Martin Chilton, CULTURE EDITOR


15 JANUARY 2016 3:35PM

or a man who left Bromley Technical High School with just one 'O' level (in
art), David
Bowie ended up a remarkably well-read man.

Bowie, who died aged 69 on January 10 2016, said that "when I'm relaxed what I
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David Bowie: the man who loved books

do is read" and described a good week as one in which he pored through "three or
four books".
Bowie was witty and knowing about his own acquisitiveness for books and first
editions. He paid tribute to his parents for passing on a love of literature. One of
the turning points of his life was reading Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac;
hesaidthat reading On The Road at 15 was an epiphanous moment, giving him
the urge to get out of Bromley.
Bowie took 400 books with him to Mexico to the shoot of 1976 film The Man Who
To Earth. He told Mr Showbiz in 1997: "I was dead scared of leaving them in New
York, because I was knocking around with some dodgy people and I didn't want
them nicking any of my books."
That set a pattern of taking a travelling library on tour and Bowie said: "I had these
cabinets it was a travelling library and they were rather like the boxes that
amplifiers get packed up in. . . because of that period, I have an extraordinarily
good collection of books."

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David Bowie: the man who loved books

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David Bowie: the man who loved books

David Bowie at the Beckenham Arts Lab in 1969 reading the 1964 book Bicyclists Dismount by Mason Williams
CREDIT: REX FEATURES

During his career, Bowie talked about the books and writers he liked, everything
from Allan Ginsberg and William Burroughs, to Stephen King ("I love Stephen
King, scares the s--- out of me"). He retained an interest in British authors: Martin
Amis ("funny"); Peter Ackroyd ("there's a great mysticism in his work. I've read
everything he's ever written. That disquieting underbelly that he sees in London,
that's how I perceive it too."); Julian Barnes ("I really like him, it's another world")
but said he had problems with Thomas Hardy. "There's a resonance in Thomas
Hardy that I appreciate but I still find it hard work," said Bowie.
David Bowie in pictures
One of the few times he expressed a negative opinion was about Anita Brookner's
Hotel du Lac, telling Ikon in 1995 that the1984Booker Prize-winning novel was
"something I just can't use, it doesn't apply".
Bowie's tastes were eclectic but impressive. He was also a fan of the cult comic
novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole and Spike Milligan's
Puckoon.
And thanks to an exhibition of Bowie at the Running at the Art Gallery in Toronto,
Ontario, we have a list from co-curator Geoffrey Marsh of Bowie's 100 favourite
books.

The many faces of David Bowie

David Bowie's Top 100 books


The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby, 2008
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Daz, 2007
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The Coast of Utopia (trilogy), Tom Stoppard, 2007


Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage, 2007
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters, 2002
The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens, 2001
Mr. Wilsons Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler, 1997
A Peoples Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes, 1997
The Insult, Rupert Thomson, 1996
Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon, 1995
The Bird Artist, Howard Norman, 1994
Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard, 1993
Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C.
Danto, 1992
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille
Paglia, 1990
David Bomberg, Richard Cork, 1988
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter
Guralnick, 1986
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, 1986
Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd, 1985
Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey, 1984
Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter, 1984
Money, Martin Amis, 1984
White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1984
Flauberts Parrot, Julian Barnes, 1984
The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White, 1984
A Peoples History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 1980
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A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980


Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1980
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, 1980
Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess, 1980
Raw (a graphix magazine) 1980-91
Viz (magazine) 1979
The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, 1979
Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz, 1978
In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan, 1978
Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed. Malcolm Cowley, 1977
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian
Jaynes, 1976
Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Sanders, 1975
Mystery Train, Greil Marcus, 1975
Selected Poems, Frank OHara, 1974
Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich, 1972
In Bluebeards Castle: Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George
Steiner, 1971
Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky, 1971
The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillete, 1970
The Quest For Christa T, Christa Wolf, 1968
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn, 1968
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967
Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg, 1967
Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr., 1966
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In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1965


City of Night, John Rechy, 1965
Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964
Puckoon, Spike Milligan, 1963
The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford, 1963
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima, 1963
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1963
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962
Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell, 1962
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961
Private Eye (magazine) 1961
On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding,
1961
Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage, 1961
Strange People, Frank Edwards, 1961
The Divided Self, R. D. Laing, 1960
All The Emperors Horses, David Kidd, 1960
Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse, 1959
The Leopard, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, 1958
On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard, 1957
Room at the Top, John Braine, 1957
A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno, 1956
The Outsider, Colin Wilson, 1956
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
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Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949


The Street, Ann Petry, 1946
Black Boy, Richard Wright, 1945

David Bowie's 20 greatest


tracks
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