Bowie's Bookshelf
The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie's Life
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Named one of Entertainment Weekly’s 12 biggest music memoirs this fall. “An artful and wildly enthralling path for Bowie fans in particular and book lovers in general.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.” ―David Bowie
Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities.
In 100 short essays, music journalist John O’Connell studies each book on Bowie’s list and contextualizes it in the artist’s life and work. How did the power imbued in a single suit of armor in The Iliad impact a man who loved costumes, shifting identity, and the siren song of the alter-ego? How did The Gnostic Gospels inform Bowie’s own hazy personal cosmology? How did the poems of T.S. Eliot and Frank O’Hara, the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and Anthony Burgess, the comics of The Beano and The Viz, and the groundbreaking politics of James Baldwin influence Bowie’s lyrics, his sound, his artistic outlook? How did the 100 books on this list influence one of the most influential artists of a generation?
Heartfelt, analytical, and totally original, Bowie’s Bookshelf is one part epic reading guide and one part biography of a music legend.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former Time Out editor O'Connell does an outstanding job of analyzing a disparate list, initially published for the Victoria and Albert Museum's 2013 David Bowie Is exhibit, of the 100 books which the late singer cited as his greatest influences. Bowie is revealed here as a voracious reader, with a taste for everything from Flaubert to Stephen King. O'Connell offers summations and analysis of both the titles at hand and how they may have impacted Bowie. In some cases (John Cage's Silence: Lectures and Writing, Orwell's 1984) the connection is rather obvious, but others, such as Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys and lesser-known titles including Rupert Thomson's "haunting" novel The Insult, which O'Connell finds evocative of Bowie's "impatience with traditional narrative forms," are less predictable. O'Connell makes a solid case for how each book figures into the star's career, sprinkling Bowie trivia throughout along with corresponding Bowie songs ("Can You Hear Me," for example, is recommended while reading The Great Gatsby) and suggested additional works by the highlighted author. O'Connell avoids the trap of getting too far into the weeds of lit-crit or pop-star fandom, carving out an artful and wildly enthralling path for Bowie fans in particular and book lovers in general.
