In a beautiful educational arc David Bowie would happily state, many times that he graduated with one singular O Level. A precocious child, turned ferocious reader he would cart over 400 books around with him on tour. A habit that formed while filming The Man Who Fell to Earth in Mexico, 1976. 

“I was dead scared of leaving them in New York, because I was knocking around with some dodgy people and I didn’t want them nicking any of my books” 

We give you the shapeshifting, dystopian pixie dream boy blueprint, David Bowie’s shortlist:

Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin: A 1929 novel considered one of the most innovative works of the Weimar Republic. Political turmoil, violence and economic hardship as well as vibrant artistic movements characterized the Weimar Republic.

The Master & The Margherita by Mikhail Bulgakov: A novel by soviet writer, written in the Soviet Union during Stalin's regime. A supernatural novel entwined with dark comedy. 

Kafka was the Rage by Anatole Broyard: A rumination on life in Greenwich Village in the late 1940s. Written by a fledgling avantgardist enamored with books, sense and neighbourhood. 

Interviews with Francis Bacon by David Sylvester: Nine interviews with francis Bacon across 20 years. Insight into the cretaive mind and movement through liminal space.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: The eponymous Madam lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities of empty existence. 

Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima: The first in the Sea of Fertility tetralogy. Ancient aristocracy is unveiled for the first time to outsiders. 

Money by Martin Amis: Based on Amis' experience as a scriptwriter on ‘Saturn3’, a Kirk Douglas film. A sprawling, vulgar display, darkly humourous. Money was included in Time's 100 Best English Language Novels from 1923 to the present. 

The Stranger by Albert Camus: A novella by the French author centered around the themes of absurdism, philosophy & existentialism (though Camus rejected existentialism)

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner: A harrowing account of the Bundren family's odyssey across the American countryside. Often attributed and assumedly derived from Homer's Odyssey. 

The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness by Ronald David Laing:  An abstraction of all things human, very Starman.