David Bowie's 100 Favourite books: How many have you read?

[Rev. Rye]

I recently stumbled upon this list written by David Bowie, sharing 100 of the best books he had read in his first 66 years of life.
And it's actually impressive seeing the breadth of his literary tastes, from fiction to books on artists to writings by John Cage to treatises on advertising to Russian history to unorthodox theories of psychology to fringe religious and philosophical books. As someone who reads a shit-ton of books every year, seeing how eclectic it is impresses me.

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 Brodieby 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 [Only The Lunch Poems]
The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
Maldodor by Comte de Lautréamont
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders by Lawrence Weschler
Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Transcendental Magic, Its Doctine 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

I have read 31 of the 100 books. And, honestly, I intend to augment that number fairly soon (particularly works like "Mr. Wilson's Cabinet," "McTeague," "American Unreason," "Fingersmith," and "Songlines.") And yet, I have to wonder if there's anyone else here who can better me?

[Jesster]

I love to read, but I guess Bowie and I don't share a lot of the same interests. I've read five of these. Out of those five, I enjoyed two.

A Clockwork Orange
Iliad
The Great Gatsby
1984
Inferno

[Alex K]

Iliad, The Stranger, 1984

hey, better than nothing!

[Little lunch]

I've read four of those books, but I've never heard of any of the others except one.

[Foxaèr]

Classic literature bores me for a reason.

[Jesster]

Classic literature bores me for a reason.

This is part of why I haven't read more on this list. Classic literature is held up on a high pedestal simply because they are classics. While they may be well-written, the culture they are important to isn't always universal or timeless. Some of them still certainly stand out, though. 1984 is absolutely still important.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The Stranger, The Great Gatsby, 1984, and Black Boy.

I've got a different list myself ... I wonder how many he had read?

[Foxaèr]

I've got a different list myself ... I wonder how many he had read?

That is the greatest thing about being human and realizing the same in others.

Who the fuck cares what one or the other has read.

That is the truth.

[Alex K]

Classic literature bores me for a reason.

This is part of why I haven't read more on this list. Classic literature is held up on a high pedestal simply because they are classics. While they may be well-written, the culture they are important to isn't always universal or timeless. Some of them still certainly stand out, though. 1984 is absolutely still important.

My problem is that whenever I am tempted to read a novel, I find a nonfic book I'd rather read.

[Thumpalumpacus]

This is part of why I haven't read more on this list. Classic literature is held up on a high pedestal simply because they are classics. While they may be well-written, the culture they are important to isn't always universal or timeless. Some of them still certainly stand out, though. 1984 is absolutely still important.

My problem is that whenever I am tempted to read a novel, I find a nonfic book I'd rather read.

I much prefer nonfiction, myself. You can find writing just as evocative, but deep in your mind is the realization that this shit really happened. A writer doesn't have to appeal to fiction in order to address human truths. Indeed, the fact that it actually happened says more about the human condition, I think.