Bowie's Books

Since David Bowie was a celebrity, I'm putting this here, rather than on ILB (also, because books, not putting it on ILM).
[irl]https://www.openculture.com/2024/09/david-bowies-100-must-read-books.html[/url]

also (I didn't know about Duncan Jones's David Bowie Book Club, reading through Dad's faves)
[Removed Illegal Link]

lol @ Camille Paglia

illegal link? how about this?
https://www.openculture.com/2019/10/bowies-bookshelf.html
If that doesn't work, it's also on openculture dot com, 2019, this one:

Bowie’s Bookshelf: A New Essay Collection on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

lol writing a book on someone else's top100 is such a weird move

no weirder than Bowie covering Springsteen

Reminded me to find this again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrtXFTw2ico

Bowie and Springsteen are both Dylan stans with a flair for the theatrical, they're closer than you'd think.

oh I know, I wanted to troll

I used to piss off my fellow Springsteen-loving pal in the '90s with explanations on how Springsteen used affect as well as Bowie.

Yeah, I saw 'em both around '74, Bruce & Co. touring behind matchless The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle: easily theatrical as Bowie, and already known for it (Creem hailing his spaghetti western operatics), The only question was whether you liked it or not; the audience I was in sure did.

List reads like a 20 year old who is into literary fiction, but just kept going in the samey way until they died. Very eyerolly.

Has anyone done a poll?

This isn't the list I saw several years ago. Way less novels, way more non-fiction. Maybe a list of books on his shelves?

Anyway, this list isn't representative imo

The Stranger,, man! Dunno what I'd think about that now, may re-read. Ditto The Divided Self and City of Night.

Madame Bovary, As I Lay Dying, Black Boy, all those books about music yes.
Still need to read Passing, The Street, Last Exit To Brooklyn. Berlin Alexanderplatz---others on there?

I don't know what this thread is about

I've read 14 of those, and other books by some of the authors listed (Mishima, Hitchens, Amis).

List reads like a 20 year old who is into literary fiction, but just kept going in the samey way until they died. Very eyerolly.

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, September 24, 2024 5:25 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

dumb comment

No its good.

there was this in 2019: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/nov/13/bowies-books-why-bowie-matters-review

Tangential and not a knock on that book in particular but God I hate the "why x matters" formula in music books. Not sure if it's an actual series or just something that caught on but bleargh.

It's an actual series. Every volume I've read has been excellent, actually.

I find the formula depressingly explainerish and don't like the idea of socio-cultural Importance as the reason to engage with anyone's work. But hey if it gets good books published.

Not every entry goes into sociocultural import.

Widely popular musicians always matter -- to their many fans. This is incontestable. Some musicians have a big impact on other musicians. I'm trying to think of musicians who have changed society in non-trivial ways. Drawing a blank.

Any musicians who have enough faith in themselves and other people, that there are shared concerns, interests, appetites, that there are brains, hearts, other parts that can respond to each other---and, starting probably in the 20th Century, with copyright laws and royalty statements, sometimes reliable, demonstrating that you can even take a chance on not doing something totally or too obviously received, and make at least some money, a record as calling card for the road, where you can make the real or realer money---each musician like that, not pandering, does their good bit for society.