75 Books Everyone Must Read, According To David Bowie

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In tandem with the opening of “David Bowie I,” the most recent David Bowie-themed exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario, which will run from September 25th to November 27th, curators Geoffrey Marsh and Victoria Broackes released a list of David Bowie’s top 100 favorite books of all time. Here, 75 of his 100 favorite books.
  1. The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby, 2008
  2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz, 2007
  3. The Coast of Utopia (trilogy), Tom Stoppard, 2007
  4. Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage, 2007
  5. Fingersmith, Sarah Waters, 2002
  6. The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens, 2001
  7. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler, 1997
  8. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes, 1997
  9. The Insult, Rupert Thomson, 1996
  10. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon, 1995
  11. The Bird Artist, Howard Norman, 1994
  12. Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard, 1993
  13. Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C. Danto, 1992
  14. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia, 1990
  15. David Bomberg, Richard Cork, 1988
  16. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter Guralnick, 1986
  17. The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, 1986
  18. Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd, 1985
  19. Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey, 1984
  20. Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter, 1984
  21. Money, Martin Amis, 1984
  22. White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1984
  23. Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes, 1984
  24. The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White, 1984
  25. A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 1980
  26. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980
  27. Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1980
  28. Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, 1980
  29. Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess, 1980
  30. Raw (a ‘graphix magazine’) 1980-91
  31. Viz (magazine) 1979 –
  32. The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, 1979
  33. Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz, 1978
  34. In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan, 1978
  35. Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed. Malcolm Cowley, 1977
  36. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976
  37. Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Saunders, 1975
  38. Mystery Train, Greil Marcus, 1975
  39. Selected Poems, Frank O’Hara, 1974
  40. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich, 1972
  41. In Bluebeard’s Castle : Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George Steiner, 1971
  42. Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky, 1971
  43. The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillete, 1970
  44. The Quest For Christa T, Christa Wolf, 1968
  45. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn, 1968
  46. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967
  47. Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg, 1967
  48. Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr. , 1966
  49. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1965
  50. City of Night, John Rechy, 1965
  51. Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964
  52. Puckoon, Spike Milligan, 1963
  53. The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford, 1963
  54. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima, 1963
  55. The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1963
  56. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962
  57. Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell, 1962
  58. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961
  59. Private Eye (magazine) 1961 –
  60. On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding, 1961
  61. Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage, 1961
  62. Strange People, Frank Edwards, 1961
  63. The Divided Self, R. D. Laing, 1960
  64. All The Emperor’s Horses, David Kidd,1960
  65. Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse, 1959
  66. The Leopard, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, 1958
  67. On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
  68. The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard, 1957
  69. Room at the Top, John Braine, 1957
  70. A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno, 1956
  71. The Outsider, Colin Wilson, 1956
  72. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
  73. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949
  74. The Street, Ann Petry, 1946
  75. Black Boy, Richard Wright, 1945