WHAT WOULD DAVID BOWIE READ?

As it happens, a new retrospective of David Bowie’s work at the Art Gallery of Ontario features 75 must-read books selected by Bowie himself. 

You can read it here.

And of that list, it turns out I’ve read eleven (11) of them:

• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• City of Night by John Rechy
• The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
• Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea by Yukio Mishima
• White Noise by Don DeLillo

Which is more than I thought I would score. 

What’s striking too is that of the eleven books there, I’d highly recommend most of them. The exceptions would be White Noise and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace With the Sea. The former made no real impression on me, and I really didn’t enjoy the latter. (I’ve considered re-reading it to see if my late-40s self gets it, but there’s that kitten scene, which I have never been able to unread).

Also, it’s worth mentioning that The Hidden Persuaders is probably more dated now, as a couple of the studies referenced in it have since been discredited. But I’d still recommend it for historical value and the general point it makes about pervasive advertising.

Anyway, if I ever came up with my own must-read book list, most of these would make it on there.

So, you know, me and Bowie, we’re tight like that.

Then again, most of the other 64 entries on the list don't seem likely to make my to-read queue anytime soon. But who knows? You may see them on here one day.

Hunky dory,

This is dF

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EDITED TO ADD [10/6]: Thanks to bedsitter23  for pointing out that the Top 75 is actually a Top 100, but somehow the bottom 25 got clipped off in various media reports. 

The full Bowie's 100 Must-Read Books list is here.  

And that also means I get to add three more books to the above list: 

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Iliad by Homer
• The Outsider by Albert Camus

That said, I don't know if I'd include any of them on my own "must-read" list. Maybe The Outsider, which I liked a lot in college, but it didn't have quite the same impact as the others.