“Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.”
–David Bowie
This week has seen a profusion of grief, memories, and thoughts regarding the passing of rock star David Bowie. And while his legacy is still being debated and contested by those who knew him, and those who were touched by his life and his art, one fact stands out–the world has lost a quintessential bookworm.
According to Geoffrey Marsh, the curator of the Bowie exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Bowie was a “voracious reader” who may have consumed a book a day (and possibly as many as eight!), from an incredibly diverse range of genres. Several of his songs, including “Big Brother” and “We Are the Dead” were originally intended for a musical version of Orwell’s 1984. In 1998, Vanity Fair published Bowie’s responses to the Proust Questionnaire, a personality test first given to author Marcel Proust by his friend Antoinette. You can read the whole survey here, but my personal favorite part of the survey is the question, “What is the quality you most like in a man?” Bowie’s response? “The ability to return books.” Amen.
In addition, having grown up during the the age of austerity in Britain, Bowie never forgot the power of libraries to change people’s lives. So while the internet continues to debate the legacy of David Bowie, and we hear more stories about how Bowie, and his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, gave individuals the courage to become the person they were meant to be, we thought we’d share with you this list of David Bowie’s 75 favorite books. Interestingly, this list was organized chronologically, rather than in order of preference, giving us an intriguing timeline of the star’s literary life.
In perusing this list, it’s also clear that Bowie would have been right at home in the Library’s Classics Book Group, as a number of our selections are also featured on his list, including:
You can check out the rest of the list right here, and plenty of Bowie’s music, as well, at the Library.