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David Bowie's Top 100 Books [Plus Some Links]

Friday, January 15, 2016

READList compiled by DavidBowie.com. 

I've seen this going around a lot, and it is one of the more interesting - and eclectic - reading lists. So I've stashed it here to mull over properly.

I've also cleaned it up a tiny bit to add publication dates and fix some small typos. Where the books are free online, I've added links to legal download sites.

  • 1984 by George Orwell (1949)
  • A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
  • A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
  • A Grave for a Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno (1956)
  • A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980)
  • A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes (1996)
  • All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd (1955) - original publication is available for New Yorker subscribers
  • As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930)
  • Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn (1969)
  • Beano (1938)
  • Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich (1972)
  • Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin (1929)
  • Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto (1992)
  • Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse (1959)
  • Black Boy by Richard Wright (1945)
  • Blast by Wyndham Lewis (1914)
  • City of Night by John Rechy (1963)
  • Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1940)
  • David Bomberg by Richard Cork (1987)
  • Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess (1980)
  • English Journey by J.B. Priestley (1934)
  • Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
  • Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes (1984)
  • Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art by James A. Hall (1974)
  • Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd (1985)
  • Herzog by Saul Bellow (1964)
  • Iliad by Homer
  • In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan (1978)
  • In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner (1971)
  • In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (1966)
  • Infants of The Spring by Wallace Thurman (1932)
  • Inferno by Dante Alighieri (1320)
  • Inside The Whale and Other Essays by George Orwell (1940)
  • Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester (1987)
  • Journey into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg (1967)
  • Kafka was the Rage by Anatole Broyard (1993)
  • Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence (1928)
  • Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. (1964)
  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
  • Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1856)
  • Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont (1869) [French]
  • McTeague by Frank Norris (1899)
  • Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz (1978)
  • Money by Martin Amis (1984)
  • Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood (1935)
  • Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler (1995)
  • Mystery Train by Greil Marcus (1975)
  • Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (1984)
  • Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey (1984)
  • Octobriana and The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky (1971)
  • On Having No Head by Douglas Harding (1986)
  • On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957)
  • Passing by Nella Larson (1929)
  • Private Eye (1961)
  • Puckoon by Spike Milligan (1963)
  • Raw (1980)
  • Room at the Top by John Braine (1957)
  • Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara (1974)
  • Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia (1990)
  • Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage (1961)
  • Strange People by Frank Edwards (1961)
  • Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick (1986)
  • Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo (1978)
  • Tales of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders (1975)
  • Teenage by Jon Savage (2007)
  • The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos (1930)
  • The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby (2008)
  • The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford (1963)
  • The Bird Artist by Howard Norman (1911)
  • The Bridge by Hart Crane (1930)
  • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)
  • The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard (2002)
  • The Day of The Locust by Nathanael West (1939)
  • The Divided Self by R. D. Laing (1960)
  • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (1963)
  • The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels (1979)
  • The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
  • The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard (1957)
  • The Insult by Rupert Thomson (1996)
  • The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa (1958)
  • The Life and Times of Little Richard by Charles White (1984)
  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
  • The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976)
  • The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)
  • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (1961)
  • The Quest for Christa T by Christa Wolf (1968)
  • The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima (1963)
  • The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin (1986)
  • The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll by Charlie Gillete (1970)
  • The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
  • The Street by Ann Petry (1946)
  • The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens (2001)
  • The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot (1930)
  • Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi (1854-6)
  • Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (1930)
  • Viz (1979)
  • White Noise by Don DeLillo (1985)
  • Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon (1995)
  • Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley (1977)
  • Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1842)

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