Welcome to another episode of the Bowie Book Club, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol a picaresque novel of a grifter being grifty in Old Russia.
Welcome to another episode of the Bowie Book Club, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read Hollywood Babylon a cruel and carnal compilation of old Hollywood tragedies written by Kenneth Anger, who apparently shares our disdain for thorough research!
Welcome to another episode of the Bowie Book Club, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, a hard-boiled story of mysterious realms, stiff drinks and super-powered artifacts.
Welcome to another episode of the **Bowie Book Club**, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read a book mostly about conferences on the astral plane, Psychic Self-Defense by Dion Fortune.
Welcome to another episode of the **Bowie Book Club**, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read Orlando by Virginia Woolf, a book that essentially proves that David Bowie and Tilda Swinton are one person.
Welcome to another episode of the Bowie Book Club, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read (sort of) A Grave for a Dolphin by Ally Teeth (or Alberto Denti, Duke of Pirajno, if you must), a story about a manic pixie dream fish and the marine biologist (?) who loved her.
Welcome to another episode of the Bowie Book Club, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, an overheated occult pot-boiler that manages to keep the hot esoteric gobbletygook flying for over 400 pages! Spoiler alert: Greg wrote this description and it may (does) not reflect the views of the other half of this podcast.
Welcome to another episode of the **Bowie Book Club**, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read Nowhere to Run by Gerri Hirshey - interviews with foundational artists of soul music as they deal with aging, and (in the case of Screaming Jay Hawkins) serve drinks out of a skull or something.
Welcome to another episode of the Bowie Book Club, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read Private Eye, a half-serious, half-silly British political magazine that is the ultimate i IYKYK.
Welcome to another episode of the Bowie Book Club, where wild speculation and grasping for straws about Bowie’s favorite books has reigned supreme since 2016. This time we read Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler, a tale of human pyschology under duress that makes a fitting end to the Russian books that Bowie had on his list.
If you’ve listened to the podcast you know something about our highly scientific method of choosing what books we’re going to read. The patented process involves having a drink or three and finding numbers around us in the pub - this year it was at the venerable Cafe Racer one of the last bastions of old, weird Seattle and a great place to get cheese fries and look at disturbing found art.
We ran the numbers into our working list of David Bowie’s 100 books and, ta da! here you have it, our list for 2020 - in no particular order (in fact, in a completely nonsensical order).
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby - listen now
McTeague by Frank Norris - listen now
Cats! by T.S. Eliot (just kidding - it's The Waste Land) - listen now
Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia - listen now
Black Boy by Richard Wright - listen now
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark - listen now
Teenage by Jon Savage - listen now
The Street by Ann Petry - listen now
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn - listen now
Journey Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
The Life and Times of Little Richard by Charles White - listen now
Mystery Train by Greil Marcus