To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved stories
To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories

The 15 Best David Bowie Books
By Corey Seymour
Today marks four years since David Bowie died—two days after his 69th birthday, when he also released his final, monumental album, Blackstar . And while there was no shortage of books about him during his lifetime, the market has virtually exploded since his passing. It’s no big secret why: The nature of Bowie’s fame, genius, influences, and influence is an all-encompassing thing that’s relevant to art and photography, fashion, theater and performance, and every shade and school of critical analysis. (There’s also no dearth of scandalous tell-alls and tabloid-y, fly-by-night biographies, which we’re ignoring here out of respect—a man who orchestrated his passing with the level of discretion and artistic triumph that Bowie did doesn’t deserve to be feasted on by scavengers.)
Here’s our pick of the best Bowie books for every person, occasion, and special interest—whether you’re merely interested in looking at some pictures or have committed yourself to a self-taught course in Advanced Bowie Studies.
All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

The Rise of David Bowie, 1972–1973 by Mick Rock
For pure visual splendor focusing on Bowie’s most well-known persona, Ziggy Stardust, nothing beats this volume of Bowie-blessed photographs from the artist’s official photographer and creative partner—with half of the photos in it published for the first time. For mesmerizing, fly-on-the-wall documentation of Bowie’s glitter-clad, glam-rock, his/her Ziggy, nothing beats this.

On Bowie by Rob Sheffield
Still personal—but less weird than Brooker’s search for meaning—is Rolling Stone contributing editor Rob Sheffield’s tribute, written at lightning speed in the immediate aftermath of Bowie’s passing. Like The Last Interview , it’s a slim volume that packs a punch: While Sheffield’s knowledge of Bowie runs deep, this is neither a showy book nor an academic one, and while his sense of loss is palpable, On Bowie isn’t maudlin or morose—it’s deeply informed, often hilarious, and properly celebratory.

The Age of Bowie: How David Bowie Made a World of Difference by Paul Morley
Morley, a veteran British rock critic, pours blood, sweat, and tears on the pages in this freewheeling, deeply informed, and, yes, ragingly personal admixture of biography, memoir, loving tribute, cultural theory, and enlightened self-help book. Pretentious? At times, wildly—but that’s part of its immense charm. Morley—who conjured the theoretical framework and title of the David Bowie Is exhibitions—states early on that “everybody has their own Bowie,” and it’s his refusal to put constraints on either Bowie or his own rococo rendering of him that that makes these 496 pages so indispensable.

Strange Fascination: Bowie: The Definitive Story by David Buckley
While this biography was published a decade before Bowie died—look elsewhere for coverage of his death, his legacy, and his last two albums—this is likely the most insightful critical biography we have, deeply learned about not just the songs, but the albums, the tours, the personas, and the artistic vision. You’ll have to put a bit more into it than most of the rest of these books, but you’ll reap more from it as well.

Bowie by O’Neill by Terry O’Neill
Where Mick Rock’s book trails off, photographer Terry O’Neill’s book picks up: Witness here the end of Ziggy—announced onstage suddenly by Bowie at the end of a 1973 performance in London, stunning his backing band—and the continued evolution of Bowie circa Young Americans and Diamond Dogs . What this volume lacks in monomania, it more than makes up for in more than 500 photos of immense breadth and depth.

David Bowie Is by Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh
Almost inarguably the single best one-volume resource on Bowie: 256 pages of photos and fashion culled from Bowie’s personal archive, interspersed with critical essays (by everyone from Jon Savage to Camille Paglia) taking stock of Bowie’s singular place in 20th-century art, music, and performance. If you saw the museum exhibition for which this serves as a catalog, it’s a grace note; if you didn’t, it’s the next best thing to having been there.

David Bowie: The Oral History by Dylan Jones
If you’re looking for a deeply sourced, authoritative, and occasionally gossipy account of Bowie’s life—from his childhood in London’s suburbs to worldwide fame and artistic triumph—this oral biography from the editor of British GQ can’t be beat. Jones interviewed more than 180 of those closest to Bowie, and while the supernova of the artist’s sound and vision come through loud and clear, it’s equally clear that this didn’t come without tears, toil, trouble, and loss.

Where’s Bowie? Search For David Bowie in Berlin, Studio 54, Outer Space, and More by Kev Gahan
Had enough of insightful critical biographies? This joyous illustrated book is styled as if it’s for kids—but it’s equally, if not more so, beloved among Bowie-loving grown-ups. (I bought it with the flimsy hopes of hoodwinking my eight-year-old daughter into falling in love with Bowie—three days later she was dropping sage references to Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs into her conversation, and now wears Ziggy-style lightning-bolt earrings. Mission accomplished!) Modeled on the Where’s Waldo? concept, Where’s Bowie? presents shockingly on-point spread after spread of Bowie-centric milieu and asks you to find the Bowies—from the Thin White Duke standing outside Berlin’s Hansa studio to Ziggy Stardust lost in the cosmos—hidden within.
In Memoriam: David Bowie's Top 100 Favorite Books

David Bowie performs at Tweeter Center outside Chicago in Tinley Park,IL, USA on August 8, 2002. Photo by Adam Bielawski
Though one of his songs is titled " I Can't Read ", David Bowie was actually quite the voracious reader. In 2013, he posted a list of his top 100 favorite reads on his Facebook page and we're glad he did—Bowie's list of favorites is diverse and eclectic, ranging from poetry to comics to the kind of trippy reads you'd expect Ziggy Stardust to dig. In memory of one of the world's most iconic artists, put on some David Bowie tunes and crack the spine of one of the books that helped shape the legendary musician.
David Bowie's Top 100 Reads:
- Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
- Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
- Room At The Top by John Braine
- On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
- Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- City Of Night by John Rechy
- The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Iliad by Homer
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
- Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
- Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
- Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
- Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
- David Bomberg by Richard Cork
- Blast by Wyndham Lewis
- Passing by Nella Larson
- Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
- The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
- In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
- Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
- The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
- The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
- The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
- Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
- The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Herzog by Saul Bellow
- Puckoon by Spike Milligan
- Black Boy by Richard Wright
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
- Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
- The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
- McTeague by Frank Norris
- Money by Martin Amis
- The Outsider by Colin Wilson
- Strange People by Frank Edwards
- English Journey by J.B. Priestley
- A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
- Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
- Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
- 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
- Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont
- On The Road by Jack Kerouac
- Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
- Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine 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
The best free cultural &
educational media on the web
- Online Courses
- Certificates
- Degrees & Mini-Degrees
- Audio Books
David Bowie’s Top 100 Books
in Books , Music | October 1st, 2013 14 Comments

Image by Avro, via Wikimedia Commons
“David Bowie Is,” the extensive retrospective exhibit of the artist and his fabulous costumes, hit Toronto last Friday (see our post from earlier today ), and as many people have reported, in addition to those costumes—and photos, instruments, set designs, lyric sheets, etc.—the show includes a list of Bowie’s favorite books. Described as a “voracious reader” by curator Geoffrey Marsh, Bowie’s top 100 book list spans decades, from Richard Wright’s raw 1945 memoir Black Boy to Susan Jacoby’s 2008 analysis of U.S. anti-intellectualism in The Age of American Unreason .
Bowie’s always had a complicated relationship with the U.S. , but his list shows a lot of love to American writers, from the aforementioned to Truman Capote, Hubert Selby, Jr., Saul Bellow, Junot Diaz, Jack Kerouac and many more. He’s also very fond of fellow Brits George Orwell, Ian McEwan, and Julian Barnes and loves Mishima and Bulgakov. You can read the full list below or over at Open Book Toronto , who urges you to “grab one of these titles and settle in to read — and just think, somewhere, at some point, David Bowie (or, to be more accurate, the man behind David Bowie, David Jones) was doing the exact same thing.” If that sort of thing inspires you to pick up a good book, go for it. You could also peruse the list, then puzzle over the literate Bowie’s lyrics to “I Can’t Read.” You can also explore a new related book– Bowie’s Bookshelf : The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life .
- Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
- Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
- Room At The Top by John Braine
- On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
- Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
- A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- City Of Night by John Rechy
- The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Iliad by Homer
- As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
- Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
- Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
- Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
- Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
- Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
- David Bomberg by Richard Cork
- Blast by Wyndham Lewis
- Passing by Nella Larson
- Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
- The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
- In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
- Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
- The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
- The Stranger by Albert Camus
- Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
- The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
- The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
- Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
- The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
- The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
- Herzog by Saul Bellow
- Puckoon by Spike Milligan
- Black Boy by Richard Wright
- The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
- Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
- The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
- McTeague by Frank Norris
- Money by Martin Amis
- The Outsider by Colin Wilson
- Strange People by Frank Edwards
- English Journey by J.B. Priestley
- A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
- Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
- Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
- 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 Gillette
- 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
- Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont
- On The Road by Jack Kerouac
- Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
- Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
- Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
- The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
- The Leopard by Giuseppe 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
If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newsletter, please find it here .
If you would like to support the mission of Open Culture, consider making a donation to our site . It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere. You can contribute through PayPal , Patreon , and Venmo (@openculture). Thanks!
Related Content:
Brian Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuilding Civilization & 59 Books For Building Your Intellectual World
Bowie’s Bookshelf: A New Essay Collection on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life
David Bowie Releases Vintage Videos of His Greatest Hits from the 1970s and 1980s
David Bowie Recalls the Strange Experience of Inventing the Character Ziggy Stardust (1977)
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
by Josh Jones | Permalink | Comments (14) |

Related posts:
Comments (14), 14 comments so far.
epic reading list, will check some new reads from!
Did you notice this “top 100” list only has 75 books on it? :-)
So you read DB’s news post ;)nnhttp://www.davidbowie.com/news/bowie-s-top-100-books-complete-list-52061
Because, 100 catches your eye.
It’s a copy-paste error, missing the last 25. Follow the link tonhttp://www.openbooktoronto.com/news/special_feature_how_read_bowiento see the full list.
Thats not the most shocking thing, after all the drugs, I’m shocked he reads…that feat takes concentration…lol
Shteperanik errr
http://bowiesattva.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/whats-on-bowies-bookshelves/nnI wrote about this in March 2012.
i love it nghe thuat duong pho
Is this the “top 100 (75)” books recommended by D.B., or a hundred books selected by exihibition curators Marsh and Victoria Broackes “from Bowie’s personal archive of over 70,000 [items]”? The source is very vague on the subject.
No books from before the 20th century…
I feel like “Lolita” has been influential on a lot of musicians. Maybe this is because the amazing manipulation of language and the musicality of the writing. I know that Nick Cave has also cited Lolita as one of his favorite books.
Thanks for posting the list of Bowie’s books! Many here I want to read.
How about the Iliad?
Add a comment
Leave a reply.
Name (required)
Email (required)
XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
Click here to cancel reply.
- 1,700 Free Online Courses
- 200 Online Certificate Programs
- 100+ Online Degree & Mini-Degree Programs
- 1,150 Free Movies
- 1,000 Free Audio Books
- 150+ Best Podcasts
- 800 Free eBooks
- 200 Free Textbooks
- 300 Free Language Lessons
- 150 Free Business Courses
- Free K-12 Education
- Get Our Daily Email
Free Courses
- Art & Art History
- Classics/Ancient World
- Computer Science
- Data Science
- Engineering
- Environment
- Political Science
- Writing & Journalism
- All 1500 Free Courses
- 1000+ MOOCs & Certificate Courses
Receive our Daily Email
Free updates, get our daily email.
Get the best cultural and educational resources on the web curated for you in a daily email. We never spam. Unsubscribe at any time.
FOLLOW ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Free Movies
- 1150 Free Movies Online
- Free Film Noir
- Silent Films
- Documentaries
- Martial Arts/Kung Fu
- Free Hitchcock Films
- Free Charlie Chaplin
- Free John Wayne Movies
- Free Tarkovsky Films
- Free Dziga Vertov
- Free Oscar Winners
- Free Language Lessons
- All Languages

Free eBooks
- 700 Free eBooks
- Free Philosophy eBooks
- The Harvard Classics
- Philip K. Dick Stories
- Neil Gaiman Stories
- David Foster Wallace Stories & Essays
- Hemingway Stories
- Great Gatsby & Other Fitzgerald Novels
- HP Lovecraft
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Free Alice Munro Stories
- Jennifer Egan Stories
- George Saunders Stories
- Hunter S. Thompson Essays
- Joan Didion Essays
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez Stories
- David Sedaris Stories
- Stephen King
- Golden Age Comics
- Free Books by UC Press
- Life Changing Books
Free Audio Books
- 700 Free Audio Books
- Free Audio Books: Fiction
- Free Audio Books: Poetry
- Free Audio Books: Non-Fiction
Free Textbooks
- Free Physics Textbooks
- Free Computer Science Textbooks
- Free Math Textbooks
K-12 Resources
- Free Video Lessons
- Web Resources by Subject
- Quality YouTube Channels
- Teacher Resources
- All Free Kids Resources
Free Art & Images
- All Art Images & Books
- The Rijksmuseum
- Smithsonian
- The Guggenheim
- The National Gallery
- The Whitney
- LA County Museum
- Stanford University
- British Library
- Google Art Project
- French Revolution
- Getty Images
- Guggenheim Art Books
- Met Art Books
- Getty Art Books
- New York Public Library Maps
- Museum of New Zealand
- Smarthistory
- Coloring Books
- All Bach Organ Works
- All of Bach
- 80,000 Classical Music Scores
- Free Classical Music
- Live Classical Music
- 9,000 Grateful Dead Concerts
- Alan Lomax Blues & Folk Archive
Writing Tips
- William Zinsser
- Kurt Vonnegut
- Toni Morrison
- Margaret Atwood
- David Ogilvy
- Billy Wilder
- All posts by date
- Amazon Kindle
- Architecture
- Beat & Tweets
- Comics/Cartoons
- Current Affairs
- English Language
- Entrepreneurship
- Food & Drink
- Graduation Speech
- How to Learn for Free
- Internet Archive
- Language Lessons
- Most Popular
- Neuroscience
- Photography
- Pretty Much Pop
- Productivity
- UC Berkeley
- Uncategorized
- Video – Arts & Culture
- Video – Politics/Society
- Video – Science
- Video Games
Great Lectures
- Michel Foucault
- Sun Ra at UC Berkeley
- Richard Feynman
- Joseph Campbell
- Jorge Luis Borges
- Leonard Bernstein
- Richard Dawkins
- Buckminster Fuller
- Walter Kaufmann on Existentialism
- Jacques Lacan
- Roland Barthes
- Nobel Lectures by Writers
- Bertrand Russell
- Oxford Philosophy Lectures
Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.
Great Recordings
- T.S. Eliot Reads Waste Land
- Sylvia Plath - Ariel
- Joyce Reads Ulysses
- Joyce - Finnegans Wake
- Patti Smith Reads Virginia Woolf
- Albert Einstein
- Charles Bukowski
- Bill Murray
- Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare
- William Faulkner
- Flannery O'Connor
- Tolkien - The Hobbit
- Allen Ginsberg - Howl
- Dylan Thomas
- Anne Sexton
- John Cheever
- David Foster Wallace
Subscribe to our Newsletter
Book lists by.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Ernest Hemingway
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Allen Ginsberg
- Patti Smith
- Henry Miller
- Christopher Hitchens
- Joseph Brodsky
- Donald Barthelme
- David Bowie
- Samuel Beckett
- Art Garfunkel
- Marilyn Monroe
- Picks by Female Creatives
- Zadie Smith & Gary Shteyngart
- Lynda Barry
Favorite Movies
- Kurosawa's 100
- David Lynch
- Werner Herzog
- Woody Allen
- Wes Anderson
- Luis Buñuel
- Roger Ebert
- Susan Sontag
- Scorsese Foreign Films
- Philosophy Films
- September 2023
- August 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
©2006-2023 Open Culture, LLC. All rights reserved.
- Advertise with Us
- Copyright Policy
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Use


IMAGES
COMMENTS
Tuesday 10.01.13 Newer “Lend us a book we can read up alone” It’s likely that most people reading this will have already seen either the original story on openbookstoronto.com last week, or a version of it referring back to that original list of “DAVID BOWIE'S TOP 100 BOOKS”. There have also been numerous suggestions of
Bowie selects Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom by Peter Guralnick, and Nowhere to Run: The Story of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey, as well as Charlie Gillett's...
The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillett, 1970. The Quest For Christa T, Christa Wolf, 1968. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn, 1968. The Master ...
In 2013, he posted a list of his top 100 favorite reads on his Facebook page and we're glad he did—Bowie's list of favorites is diverse and eclectic, ranging from poetry to comics to the kind of trippy reads you'd expect Ziggy Stardust to dig.
Described as a “voracious reader” by curator Geoffrey Marsh, Bowie’s top 100 book list spans decades, from Richard Wright’s raw 1945 memoir Black Boy to Susan Jacoby’s 2008 analysis of U.S. anti-intellectualism in The Age of American Unreason.