David Bowie has been an enormous influence in my life. I’m certain I’ve been listening to

his music since before I was even born, thanks to my Mum.
I was born in 1983 so Let’s Dance was probably the first Bowie song I ever heard, and it’s always been a favourite of mine. Stan Grant’s article in The Guardian is well worth a read if you would like to find out more about why it was such a big deal that two Indigenous Australian’s starred in its film clip. As Bowie said at the time,
“As much as I love this country, it is probably one of the most racially intolerant in the world, well in line with South Africa.”
Yep, that’s right. Australia’s White Australia Policy was just as horrific and embarrassing as Apartheid. Perhaps Bowie is the reason why I’m so outspoken about Indigenous rights now?
And then he became my Goblin King and possibly first crush as Jareth in Labyrinth. I think I must have watched that movie about a million times!

David Bowie was so many things I wish I was. He was confident, creative, self-assured, brave, and kind. I’m going to ask myself ‘What would Bowie do?’ next time I’m in the throes of a creative dilemma!
To celebrate the life of David Bowie, I’d like to share with you all his top 100 books taken from New York Public Library. I’ve only read a few of these, so I’m going to try and get through as many as I can over the next few years.
- 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
[…] Source: David Bowie’s Top 100 Books […]
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Not many, for me…. Room At the Top is one of my all time favourites, also loved 1984, In Cold Blood, On the Road… and as for Viz…!
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It’s perfect. Such a Bowie-esque list! I’ve had at least 3 of these assigned as required reading recently (In Cold Blood, Orwell’s essays and Homer’s Iliad) and quite a few more have been mentioned and discussed.
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[…] Source: David Bowie’s Top 100 Books […]
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What a wonderful tribute to David Bowie, I just loved him and his music, he was such a creative and wonderful soul. So sad that he is no longer with this, but no doubt his music, and his special uniqueness will live on in our hearts. Sharing this on Kyrosmagica. x
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Thank you, Marjorie. His newest album is mind-blowing! Have you listened to it?
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[…] decided to post a review of 1984 by George Orwell to kick off my David Bowie top 100 books reading challenge because it also happen to be one of my own favourites. I have read this novel many times, most […]
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Thank you for sharng this. A fascinating read. Good list as well.
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So many amazing books! I’ve set this as a reading challenge for myself 🙂
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Good for you. Thre are plenty there that piqued my interest.
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What a brilliant post, Jade. I spent most of Monday in a gloomy state, playing all my Bowie albums. Then at lunchtime I heard Marc Almond (Soft Cell) being interviewed. He said that David Bowie taught him more than school ever did because he influenced his choices of what to read, what art to like and what music to listen to. So I’m going to join you in this challenge; it would be the perfect way to pay tribute to a great man.
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Thank you so much, Katrina! I’m so glad you will take on the challenge with me. I’m going to give myself a few years to go through it, though, because it’s my final year of uni next year. I think we will have a much wider view of the world once we are finished though! Have you had a chance to listen to his newest album yet?
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I bought it on Monday and was blown away. Even more poignant since he wrote it in the knowledge that her was dying.
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It’s so typical of him. I feel like it was his way of saying goodbye and thank you!
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I suspect it will take me a couple of years to get through it too!
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A fascinating list of books. I’ve read some and still read 84 but mostly unfamiliar to me. Good Luck with working your way through the titles … a few years I should imagine.
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Thank you, definitely giving myself a few years to work my way through this list!
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[…] was hit pretty hard by the death of David Bowie. I’m really not someone who feels deeply about celebrities, but I think most people will […]
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[…] #DBowieBooks. David Bowie was an avid reader and I am attempting to read my way through his 100 favourite books. Follow the links below to check out my reviews of the books I’ve read so […]
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