Ok, so I’ve officially decided to take on David Bowie’s top 100 books as a reading challenge and I thought it would be awesome if some people wanted to join me.
This is a very casual reading challenge. I expect it will take me a couple of years to get through myself, so there is no particular order or time limit. Some of these books will need some time to take in, so you will need to take your time!
You can read in any order you like.
You can read as many books from this list as you want, or just choose one or two.
There is no set time limit.
All you need to do to take part is use the hashtag #DBowieBooks when posting about any of the books on this list.
Feel free to tag me! My links are below.
The Full List
I discovered this list on the New York Public Library website so the links will take you to view the book information there
- 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
That is some list…
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I think it will take me a while to get through it! 🙂
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Wow, that’s whatI call a challenge! Best of luck 🙂
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Thanks Cathy 🙂 Feel free to join me completely at your own pace! Just use #DBowieBooks
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Fantastic list – only 79 to go
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Oh, you’re very far ahead of me! Feel free to join the challenge, completely at your own pace. Just use the hashtag #DBowieBooks 🙂
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Well I’ve read Fingersmith & I had to study the Waste Land at university but it’s quite a challenging list. Are you working down from 1 to 100 or selecting the ones you fancy first?
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I’m just going to select the ones I fancy first. I’ve started with 1984, so I might go through the books I’ve already read and then see where I go from there 🙂 I think even just choosing one or two per year would be worthwhile, so do join me if you see any that grab your interest!
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Oh I have read that but I first heard it on the radio which was really scary!
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Oh, that would have been scary! You reminded me of Orson Welles’ ‘War of the Worlds!’
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Wow what a cool project – wishing you all the best with the list. A Clockwork Orange is one I want to read one day and I see it there on the list!
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Thank you, Christy! Let me know if you get to A Clockwork Orange. That’s a brilliant novel and you’re more than welcome to take part in the challenge with just one book from the list 🙂
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Sounds like a wonderful way to celebrate Bowie. I’ve read a few of these, but I’ll definitely join you and try and read the rest 🙂
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Yay! Looking forward to reading with you, Alison 😀
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Ah wow, I didn’t know this list existed. So thank you. Interesting choices he made. I have read about thirty, always up for a reading challenge. Will happily join you.
I am the host of #BluSkyFriday but also @HenriettaWeed if you want to connect.
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Hi Henrietta 🙂 Lovely to have you join me. Which book do you think you might start with?
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Lovely to join in. Sorry, been absent for a while. I will probably go with The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. I know Bowie was very curious about the occult, mysticism, magick – you can see it writ large in his videos, lyrics. It does interest me too but can also be a bit freaky.
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I’m so interested in the Gnostic Gospels as well! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts 🙂
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Agreed. This is the first thing I wanted to do upon seeing your list. I will probably start next month. I like the tag; thanks for giving us a way of connecting through the power of Bowie books.
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Fantastic to have you on board! Looking forward to talking books and Bowie with you 🙂
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This is such a great idea. I’ve read some of these but I’d love to pick up a few more. I’ve just been listening to Aladdin Sane so I’m feeling inspired!
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It’s such an interesting list! I’ve just ordered a couple of books from this list, so I’m really looking forward to getting started on some I haven’t read before. I think I’ll start with ‘The Gnostic Gospels.’ 🙂
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Will enjoy following your reads – and as you are (thankfully) making it very open-ended hope to join in at some point in the not too distant!
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Thank you! It will be great to read along with you any time you like. This is definitely a challenge to do however suits best 🙂
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What a fascinatingly varied list!
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I’m having so much fun reading through it!
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That is some list and I’m surprised to find I’ve read five of them!
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There’s plenty of reading inspiration here!
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Hi! It doesn’t surprise me that David Bowie was a big reader – these are some impressive books. I’ve read some of them, but not many. Good luck with your challenge!
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Thank you! It’s going slowly but I’ve enjoyed every single one so far. There’s definitely something new to think about in every book 🙂
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