Bowie Book Club 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 Mr. Wilson's Cabinet O' Wonders by Lawrence Weschler, a short, sharp treatise on a weird, weird museum.

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Stuff We Talked About

• Lawrence Weschler's Website
• The (very Jurassic) website for the Museum of Jurassic Technology
• The American Museum of Natural History in NYC
• Maryhill Museum
• The City Museum in St. Louis
• We didn't mention it, but Greg just read this NYRB article about an early, anatomically focused cabinet of wonderp

What Are We Reading?

Favorite Books of 2022!

Kristianne

• Build Your House Around My Body - Violet Kupersmith
• A Constellation of Vital Phenomena or Mercury Pictures Presents - Anthony Marra (bonus: also author of The Tsar of Love and Techno )
• The Hearing Trumpet - Leonora Carrington
• Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century - Kim Fu (I read 11 short story collections this year! Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, Rebecca Makkai, Sequoia Nagamatsu)
• The Leopard - Giuseppe di Lampedusa

Greg

• The Leopard (of course)
• Maybe the People Would be the Times and Low Life - Lucy Sante
• LaserWriter II - Tamara Shopsin
• Means of Ascent - Robert Caro
• Life After Life - Kate Atkinson

What Song Did We Choose?

and Dave rocking the pirate shirt on The Tonight Show:

What's Up Next

• A People's Tragedy - Orlando Figes

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 In Bluebeard's Castle by George Steiner - an eccentric polymath, kind of like a certain David Jones we all know. Plus, T.S. Eliot impersonations!

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Stuff We Talked About

• Adam Gopnik's postscript on Steiner in the New Yorker
• "Our Steiner Problem, and Mine" by Lee Siegel
• The T.S. Eliot Lecture Series
• Hex Enduction Records and Books - Seattle's best record n' book store.
• Irving Howe didn't like these
• Magic and Loss - The Internet as Art
• The Book Exchange in Missoula

What Are We Reading?

Greg:

• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
• Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Kristianne:

• Square Eyes by Anna Mill and Luke Jones
• The Unwritten Book by Samantha Hunt

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• Mr. Wilson's Cabinet O' Wonders - Lawrence Weschler

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 Room at the Top by John Braine, about an angry young man in a dirty old town.

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Stuff We Talked About

• Life at the Top - the sequel!
• Man at the Top - the BBC sequel (to the sequel?)
• Simone Signoret
• Graywolf Press
• The Dorothy Project
• Chris O'Leary's Patreon
• Bluebeard - it was actually a mouse, not a cat!

What Are We Reading?

Greg:

• American Midnight edited by Laird Hunt
• Hand Drying in America by Ben Katchor
• Master of the Senate by Robert Caro

Kristianne:

• When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà purchased at Symposium Books!
• Revenge of the Scapegoat by Caren Beilin
• All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
• The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik
• Subdivision by J Robert Lennon bought at Exile in Bookville
• The Wild Hunt - by Emma Seckel

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• In Bluebeard's Castle - George Steiner

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 On the Road by everyone's high school boyfriend, Jack Kerouac. We also talk about the new Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream which we just saw IN A MOVIE THEATRE shudder!

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Stuff We Talked About

• Joyce Johnson's article on Kerouac and Robert Frank
• Hal Chase/Chad King
• Slate Star Codex review
• NYT article about Moonage Daydream

What Are We Reading?

Greg:

• Harpo Speaks by Harpo Marx
• Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene
• Vesper Flights by Helen McDonald

Kristianne:

• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Horse's Mouth by Joyce Cary (and the amazing movie starring Alec Guinness)

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• Room at the Top - John Braine

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 The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, a slow, stately book about a very hot island.

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Stuff We Talked About

• The movie version of The Leopard
• The Last Leopard - biography of Guisippe di Lampedusa by David Gilmour
• Guardian article on Lampedusa and Machievelli
• NYT article on the 50th anniversary of the book

Here's the trailer for Moonage Daydream

What Are We Reading?

Greg:

• The Dancing Plague by Gareth Fellowes
• A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman
• A Year with Swollen Appendages by Brian Eno

Kristianne:

• The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende
• The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman
• The Inheritance of Orquidea Divina by Zoraida Cordova

What Song Did We Choose?

In Italian!

What's Up Next

• On the Road - Jacky Kerouac

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 The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard - a play where a lot happens just off stage and there's a lot of talking about thinking.

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 In Between the Sheets, a kind-of-sort-of creepy book of short stories by Ian McEwan.

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Stuff We Talked About

• NY Times review of In Between the Sheets - spoiler: didn't like.
• The Czar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra
• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
• The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
• LA Weekly article on Bowie in L.A.
• Pushing ahead of the Dame on Scary Monsters

What Are We Reading?

Greg:

• Brain Bats from Venus by Greg Sadowski
• Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
• The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

Kristianne:

• Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu
• The Heroine with 1000 Faces by Maria Tatar
• How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelman

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard

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 of literary criticism/history about Gustave Flaubert that (suprise!) turns out to be a novel that's not really about a bird at all (or is it?) - Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

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 Money by Martin Amis - the literary equivalent of watching someone fall down thousands of flights of stairs and wondering why you're laughing so hard.

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Stuff We Talked About

• Steve Martin interviews Martin Amis

• Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim

• NYT review of Money that coins the phrase "The New Unpleasantness"

• Germaine Greer interview with Amis

• Our episodes on connected books: Vile Bodies, Day of the Locust and (maybe?) Bicameral Mind

• Martin Amis' review of Bowie in 1973

What Are We Reading?

Greg:

• Maybe the People Would be the Times by Lucy Sante
• LaserWriter II by Tamara Shopsin
• Downtown by Pete Hamill
• Secret Identity by Alex Segura

Kristianne: *Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (progress... it'll be awhile...)

• Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes

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 Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom (or something like that) a intensely jaded look at the first couple decades of rock music from legendary writer Nik Cohn.

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Stuff We Talked About

• Our episode on Teenage by Jon Savage

• Arfur by Nik Cohn (an inspiration for Tommy, and super expensive)

• I Am The Still the Greatest, Says Johnny Angelo by Nik Cohn (an inspiration for Ziggy Stardust?)

• Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night (the inspiration for Saturday Night Fever - and somewhat made up)

• Rock Dreams by Nik Cohn and Guy Peellaert

• Nik Cohn is nice to Bowie - and mean to the Rolling Stones

What Are We Reading?

Greg:

• Devil House by John Darnielle
• Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman
• The Dawn of Everything by Davids Graeber and Wengrow

Kristianne

• Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
• The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
• Our Crooked Hearts by Melissa Albert

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

Money - Martin Amis

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 Homer Tarantino's gory classic of bromanticism - The Iliad

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Stuff We Talked About

• We read different translations of this here gruesome volume - Kristianne had the Robert Fagles and Greg read the Carolyn Alexander

• Want to understand the Iliad? This is the only infographic you need

• The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

• The War that Killed Achilles by Carolyn Alexander

• Homer's Daughter by Robert Graves

• A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

• The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

• Our ridiculous episode about The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes

• Shakespeare's Second Best Bet

• The Myths and Legends Podcast

• Christa Wolf's book on Cassandra that we should've read!

What Are We Reading? (That Isn't Related to the Iliad)

Greg:

• Devil House by John Darnielle (also Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester)

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock - Nik Cohn

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 series of connected stories circling the post-beat, pre-hippie world of Lower Mahattan in Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders. Join us for a hour or two at the Total Assault Cantina!

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Stuff We Talked About

• Peace Eye Bookstore
• Herb Caen
• Resistance: A Radical Social and Political History of the Lower East Side
• Our episode on Peking Story
• Our episode on Kafka was the Rage
• The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner (Greg cannot resist the opportunity to plug this book)

What Are We Reading?

Greg:

• A Year With Swollen Appendanges by Brian Eno
• The Unfortunates by B.S. Johnson

Kristianne:

• Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
• The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd
• Hell of A Book by Jason Mott

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• The Iliad - Homer, but not THAT Homer

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.

We survived another year, and that means we get to dust off the ole Choosenator and see what new books it brings us. This time we had a little canine assistance - our trusty guide led us through the wilds of Seattle (ok, through quiet residential neighborhoods) and pointed us at the correct numbers for the books for 2022!

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Our 2022 Books

• The Iliad - Homer Simpson
• Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock - Nik Cohn
• Money - Martin Amis
• Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes
• In Between the Sheets - Ian McEwan
• Coast of Utopia - Tom Stoppard
• The Leopard - Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
• Room at the Top - John Braine
• On the Road - Jacky Kerouac
• In Bluebeard's Castle - George Steiner
• Mr. Wilson's Cabinet O' Wonders - Lawrence Weschler
• A People's Tragedy - Orlando Figes

Our 2021 Favorites

Kristianne:

• The Enchanted
• Tale for the Time Being
• The Anthropocene Review and The Book of Delights
• Piranesi

Greg:

• A Little Devil in America
• Gormenghast
• Tadanori Yokoo
• Piranesi
• The Dakota Winters and The Perfume Burned His Eyes

Other Stuff

Kristanne listened to House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door while walking her dog.

Greg couldn't remember that Sir Derek Jacobi read the audio version of Hawksmoor - here's our episode about that book

Buy records and books from Hex Enduction Records and Books in Lake City, Seattle. Even if you're not in Seattle, they have a giant Discogs page - they're good folks with good stuff!

Coming Up

We'll start things off next month with a relatively new, very modern tome - The Iliad. See y'all then!

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 George Orwell's classic work of numerology, 1984.

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 * The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf, a melancholy elegy that really got on the wrong side of the East German censors, for some reason.

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Stuff We Talked About

• Christa Wolf's first book Divided Heaven

• Mister T

What Are We Reading?

Kristianne:

• The Enchanted by Rene Denfield
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
• Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

Greg:

• The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
• Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
• All the Marvels by Douglas Wolk

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• 1984

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 * The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, one of our favorites on the list - a fairy tale that careens through the Moscow of the 1920's, and is otherwise impossible to describe accurately. In the spirit of inaccuracy, Greg got several names and facts wrong in this episodes, which he blames on g-g-g-g-ghosts.

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Stuff We Talked About

• The Soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ
• Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death - record by James Blackshaw (Greg got the name wrong)
• Love Is The Nessage, The Message Is Death - video installation by Arthur Jafa (Greg got the name wrong here too)

What Are We Reading?

Kristianne:

• Bewilderment by Richard Powers
• All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki
• Camille by Sheridan LeFanu

Greg:

• Book of Night Women by Marlon James
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr (pseudonym for Alice Sheldon - Greg got her story wrong too!)
• The Annotated Dracula by Bram Stoker, edited by Leslie Klinger
• A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

What Song Did We Choose?

Greg won the coin toss, so here's the SKELETON DANCE!

What's Up Next

• The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf

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 On Having No Head by Douglas Harding, a slender guidebook to quick and painless enlightenment.

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 sat in a cafe, drinking free refill after free refill, perfected our looks of total ennui and read The Stranger by Albert Camus.

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Stuff We Talked About

• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
• Looking for the Stranger by Alice Kaplan
• The Mersault Investigations
• An article about the Stranger in the New Republic
• An article about Camus in the New Yorker
• Another New Yorker article about the first word of The Stranger
• What's in a title - an article about the title of the Stranger in the Guardian
• The book that ties the whole list together
• The absurd in Bowie's world
• My hovercraft is full of eels

What Are We Reading?

Greg

• The Book of Night Women by Marlon James and finally done with Black Leopard, Red Wolf!
• The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner and Telex from Cuba too.
• The Dakota Winters by Tom Barbash
• The Sheltering Sky by Paulieboy Bowles

Kristianne

• Black Hole by Charles Burns
• How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
• Loop by Brenda Lozaro

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

On Having No Head by Douglass Harding

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 Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, a careening comic novel of doomed romance, never ending parties, and rotating gossip columnists.

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Stuff We Talked About

• The PBS series of Brideshead Revisited
• His first novel, Decline and Fall
• The movie version: Bright Young Things
• The Bowie Bookshelf

What Are We Reading?

Greg:

• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James - as always.
• Telex from Cuba by Rachel Kushner
• Centilogal 2020 by Levi Fuller

Kristianne:

• Devil in the White City
• My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• The Stranger by Albert Camus

Permalink

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 English Journey by J.B. Priestley, a gripping tale of a grump making his way around England in the dour `30s.

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Stuff We Talked About

• This is the Folio Society edition of the book that we both read.

• Down and Out In Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier by Priestly's arch-nemesis (maybe?) George Orwell.

• A BBC4 presentation on Priestly's "Postscripts" - his radio addresses during WWII.

• An English Journey, Reimagined, part 1 with Alan Moore and Ian Sinclair.

• And we totally spaced on this, but the super nice @travelswbrindle interviewed us for an article about the Bowie list for Early Bird Books. Thanks Chelsea!

What Are We Reading?

Greg: Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - still! And some of Ulysses and Ulysses Annotated for Bloomsday!

Kristianne: Red Island House by Andrea Lee and Gideon the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh

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 (though probably not the right book) about the incredibly prolific Japanese artist and graphic designer Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo.

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Stuff We Talked About

• Maybe this was the book we were supposed to read?
• Article on Yokoo's album cover designs
• Article on the mural he's working on with his daughter.
• Tadanori Yokoo's website
• Greg hearts Gary Panter who hearts Tadanori Yokoo.
• Kristianne wasn't kidding about National Goth Day
• And she was right about the name of the butoh movie - it was Cherry Blossoms)!
• Photographer Mick Rock captured Bowie in kabuki mode
• MOMA has a great selection of Yokoo's work on their website

What Are We Reading?

• Matrix by Lauren Groff
• Women and Other Monsters by Jess Zimmerman
• Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• English Journey by J.B. Priestley

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 took a little wander through Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall and read about a lot of saints with swords (sometimes stuck in their heads)

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Stuff We Talked About

• James Hall's obituary in the Guardian
• Article about the first English dictionaries
• Mountweazel!
• The random paintings we attempted to decipher.
• Our episode about David Bomberg.
• We didn't talk about it, but here's Nick Cave's handwritten dictionary h/t to Austin Kleon's excellent recent blog post on dictionaries

What Are We Reading?

• Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake
• The Hard Crowd by Rachel Kushner
• Bleak House by Charlie Dickens (as always)
• Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
• The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo

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 attemped to cobble together a plan to read Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall

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Stuff We Talked About

Ok, here's the plan for reading through this crazy dictionary:

1. Take a look at the 3 paintings below (selected in a completely scientific and statistically significant way) and make your guess as to the subject of the painting, using the dictionary as your guide.
2. Greg and Kristianne will take a random walk through the dictionary, using elements of Francis Bacon's paintings as a starting point.

If you need other stimuli, then we also mentioned:

• Dictionary of the Khazars
• The Greatest Video on the Internet, if you like Orson Welles, or even if you don't

What's Up Next

Join us here around about the 18th of April as we discuss our highly academic and rigorously researched findings!

Can you guess the subject and/or title of these paintings?

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 Interviews with Francis Bacon, a beautifully constructed cut and paste job from the noted art critic David Sylvester.

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Stuff We Talked About

• Kitty Hauser's This Is Bacon
• the Start the Week podcast
• Our episode on the Life and Times of Little Richard
• Our episode on the Waste Land
• Pushing Ahead of the Dame on "Sound and Vision"

What Song Did We Choose?

What Else Are We Reading?

• Greg will be reading Bleak House and Gormenghast for the rest of eternity.
• Kristianne is reading Girls Against God which is having some...strange...effects on her, as well as No One Is Talking About This by Twitter's one and only champion Patricia Lockwood and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

What's Up Next

• Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall

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 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a jazzy tale of the very American art of self-invention.

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Stuff We Talked About

• BBC article - "The World's Most Misunderstood Book"

• Ole Mel Bragg's "In Our Time" podcast episode on Gatsby

• Our episode on Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason

• interview about the origins of 'Nick' - here's the novel at bookshop.org

• an excerpt in the Paris Review from Wesley Morris' new introduction to Gatsby.

• Greil Marcus on Gatsby

• Jesymn Ward on Gatsby

• Gatsby, Liberace and Bowie

• Our episode on The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

What Else Did We Read This Month?

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
• Gormenghast Trilogy by Melvyn Peake
• The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
• Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

What Song Did We Choose?

What's Up Next

• Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester

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 Mystery Train, Griel Marcus' expansive summation of rock music as American culture.

Apologies for the weird clicking noise that sounds like its coming from Greg's mandibles (he forgot to wax them) - we'll have the audio hiccups fixed for next time!

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Stuff We Mentioned

• Greil Marcus' books on bookshop.org

• Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle

• Magus Books in Seattle

• Our episode on Sweet Soul Music

• Our episode on Sound of the City

• David Cantwell's New Yorker article on Greil Marcus

• Rolling Stone article on Mystery Train

• KEXP

• Books going into the public domain in 2021

• Great Gatsby episode on the In Our Time podcast

What Else We're Reading

• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

• Bleak House by Chuckie Dickens

• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

• Girls Against God by Jenny Hval

What's Up Next

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

What Song Did We Chose?

Bonus! Our Mystery Train playlist

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 chose our books for 2021, in the great outdoors, and in our typical shambolic fashion!

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Our 2021 Books

• Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
• Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
• Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
• English Journey by J.B. Priestley
• Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
• The Stranger by Albert Camus
• On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
• The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• 1984
• Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders

What's Up Next

We'll be talking about Mystery Train by Greil Marcus later this month

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 Journey Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg, a memoir of one incredibly strong woman's survival in Stalin's Reign of Terror.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• The much harder to find second installment of Ginzburg's memoir.

• The recent NY Times article about this area of Siberia and how climate change is affecting it

• so many articles about Bowie's trans-Siberian trip

• here's the fancy way to travel by train across Siberian these days.

• Our episode on the very real and not fake Communist comic book Octobriana

• Pushing Ahead of the Dame on Wild is the Wind

Our Favorite 2020 Books

We both agreed that that The Street was our favorite Bowie Book of the year - check out our episode on it.

We also agreed that Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead was in our top list. Other than that (in no order):

Kristianne

• Wolf Hall, Bring Up The Bodies and The Mirror and the Light
• Girl, Woman, Other
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• These Truths

Greg

• Deacon King Kong
• The Overstory
• The Yellow House
• Hamnet
• Washington Black
• The Essex Serpent - the author also wrote Melmoth, which we couldn't remember despite our best efforts.

What's Up Next

Mystery Train by Greil Marcus

What Song Did We Choose?

and maybe, just for the holiday season:

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 The Street by Ann Petry, a harsh but gripping tale, which **almost** led to the worst song choice in the history 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 A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, who's not really down with the SYSTEM, MAAAAAAN.

(And apologies for the audio issues at the end - it's the Man trying to keep us down!)

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Kirkus Review of A People's History

• The amazing These Truths by Jill Lepore

• An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

• A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross

• Studs Terkel's oral histories: Working and The Good War

• McNally Jackson Books - buy books from your local bookstore!!

• TruthOut - alternate news source

• Kristianne read Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo this month

• Greg read (and loved) The Good Lord Bird by James McBride this month, who also wrote Deacon King Kong, which Greg read (and loved) earlier this year.

What's Up Next

The Street by Ann Petry

What Song Did We Choose?

and here's notes on Bowie's record "Reality" from our bible - Pushing Ahead of the Dame

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 Teenage by Jon Savage and you JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW WE'RE FEELING ABOUT IT OK? /slams bedroom door/

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 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, which is really not like Dead Poets Society at all.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Never Apologize, Never Explain - Guardian article about the book by James Woods.

• England's Dreaming by Jon Savage - not Lipstick Traces which is by Greil Marcus

• Red Emma's bookstore in Baltimore

• Chris O'Leary (of Pushing Ahead of the Damefame) has great writing up on his Patreon

• Greg read Washington Black by Esi Edugyan

• Kristianne read (or listened to) The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

• Kristianne also read Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

What's Up Next

Teenage by Jon Savage

What Song Did We Choose?

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 Black Boy, Richard Wright's searing story of growing up in the Jim Crow south and his further self-education as a young man in Chicago and his further self-education as a young man in Chicago.

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 The Life and Times of Little Richard - the Authorized Biography by Charles "Dr. Rock" White, which contains lots of scatalogical pranks, sermons and stories of debauchery from one of the wildest voices ever. Rock and roll.

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 Sexual Personae by Camillia Paglia, which left us feeling a bit...cthonic.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush

• Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

• The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

• Bacchus by Eddie Campbell

• Monstress comics series

• Bowie's workflow for The Next Day

• Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

• The Case of the Missing Men

What's Up Next

The Life and Times of Little Richard by Charles White

What Song Did We Choose?

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 The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot, and tried to talk about anything else beside the poem (and you know...that other thing that's going on).

Apologies again for the recording weirdness! We're such a bunch of fireworms (that'll make more sense after you listen to this one). We'll get it together at some point.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• From Ritual to Romance

• How the Wasteland Sounds Now

• We didn't mention this (Greg spaced), but the British library has a cool webpage about the influences on The Waste Land.

• The source of the whole green face powder thing - an article about "Low" and T.S. Eliots influences.

• TS Eliot, midfield enforcer, tamed by marriage

• TS Eliot was a bad boyfriend

• William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock

• Twelve Moons by Mary Oliver

• Post-Colonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

• Loitering by Charles D'Ambrosio

• Degrees of Grey in Phillipsburg by Richard Hugo

• The Hugo House in Seattle

• The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

• Did Bowie Pinch a Cactus from T.S. Eliot? - well, did he?

• How to Do Nothing

• OMG, Alec Guiness is the best

What's Up Next

Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia

What Song Did We Choose?

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 McTeague by Frank Norris, which is surprisingly not about a rogue cop who's always getting kicked off the force and reinstated because he's just too damn good out on those streets.

Apologies for the sound quality - we're still figuring out how to do this whole remote thing!

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 wide-ranging screed on the intellectual wasteland of current American culture - Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason. And Greg reveals his ignorance of fairly recent presidential elections. Fun! #tuesdaygoths

Buy This Months Book at Bookshop

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Roderick's Chamber

• Telling Lies

• The Bloody Mary Incident

• PC Jr

• Max Headroom

• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstader

• Educated

• popped collars

• In the Land of Self Defeat

• Why We're Polarized

• These Truths

• 1619 Project

• Elliot Bay Book Company

• Holy Blood, Holy Grail

• Foucault's Pendulum

• Master and Commander

• F&W Classical Music

• James Michener

• We didn't mention it, but the James Michener Art Museum is pretty rad

• Our Herzog episode

• Lori Goldston - the greatest, seriously.

• The Yellow House

• Inland

What's Up Next

McTeague!! - you're off the force!!

What Song Did We Choose?

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 Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West, a grim fable of the darker side of Hollywood in the 30's - and reveal our books for 2020!

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Stuff we Mentioned

• The 1975 Movie Version

• Advice to the Lovelorn - the "adaption" of Miss Lonelyhearts

• The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black

• Bowie's Berlin Books - we reviewed Berlin Alexanderplatz and Mr Norris Changes Trains last year.

• And don't forget - let's bring back "phooey!" in 2020!

Our 2020 Book List

Chosen at the great Cafe Racer in Seattle

The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby

McTeague by Frank Norris

Cats by T.S. Eliot (just kidding - it's The Waste Land)

Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia

Black Boy by Richard Wright

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Teenage by Jon Savage

The Street by Ann Petry

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Journey Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

The Life and Times of Little Richard by Charles White

Mystery Train by Greil Marcus

What's Up Next

The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby

What Song Did We Choose?

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 The Bird Artist by Howard Norman, a tale from the frosty realm of Newfoundland, where women are women and men are mopey.

The Bird Artist by Howard Norman Amazon | IndieBound

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Stuff we Mentioned

• The lighthouse at Witless Bay

• Phillip (not Thomas) Marlowe

• The Ghost Clause - Howard Norman's latest book.

• Bowie's visit to Labrador

• Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller

• Davidson Galleries in Seattle

• Loganberry Books in Cleveland

Our book lists for the decade

Book lists are really hard to put together - this from books that we read over the last decade (not necessarily books that came out in the last 10 years).

Greg

• Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
• The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez
• Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
• Cruddy by Lynda Barry

Kristianne

• Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami
• Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg
• The Faraway Nearby by Rachel Solnit
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris

What's Up Next

Day of the Locust by Nathanael West Amazon | IndieBound

What Song Did We Choose?

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 The Insult by Rupert Thomson, a book about pyschosis and the seedy underbelly of society that turns out to be two books in one, much to Greg's chagrin.

The Insult by Rupert Thomson Amazon | IndieBound

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Never Anyone But You

• Author Interview in the Guardian

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

• Alnilam by James Dickey

• Overstory by Richard Powers

• Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

• Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

• How I Ended Up On Bowie's Must Read List

• @bowiesongs on "I'm Deranged". Also check out Chris' new Patreon!

• Lost Highway

• Hex Enduction Books and Records in Seattle

What's Up Next

The Bird Artist by Howard Norman Amazon | IndieBound

What Song Did We Choose?

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 Dante's Inferno, which has been inspring haunted hayrides for centuries. Happy Halloween!

Inferno by Dante Amazon | IndieBound

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Vittorio Gassman reading Canto XXI

• This is Halloween! This is Halloween!

• Gustav Dore Illustrations for The Divine Comedy

• The Twilight Zone

• Virgil

• What Dreams May Come)

• Ozzy's Slippers

• Set Model for Diamond Dogs tour

• Dante and Virgil Meeting the Shades of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo” by Ary Scheffer

• Rodin

• RODAN also Rodan, one of Greg's favorite bands ever

• Mystery Plays

• Fratello Metallo - Misteri

• @bowiesongs on Heathen

• Never Anyone But You

What's Up Next

The Insult by Rupert Thomson Amazon | IndieBound

What Song Did We Choose?

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 The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens, a book-length legal argument that helpfully reminded us of our ignorance of history.

The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens Amazon | IndieBound

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Kissinger Peace Prize?? It's true!

• Hitchens' book on Bill Clinton - No One Left to Lie To

• Hitchens' takedown of Mother Theresa - The Missionary Position

• The Satanic Verses controversy

• Hitch-22 (Hitchen's autobiography)

• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

• Politico article about the lessons National Security Advisers can learn from Kissinger

What's Up Next

Inferno by Dante Amazon | IndieBound

What Song Did We Choose?

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 that WE REALLY REALLY LIKED - Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Angela Carter is best known for her collection of stories The Bloody Chamber

• Company of Wolves (film)

• Magic Toy Shop (film)

• Angela Carter's BBC Radio plays

• Sarah Waters on reading Nights at the Circus

• the picaresque genre of fiction

• Heartbreak Soup

What's Up Next

Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens Amazon | IndieBound

What Song Did We Choose?

This time we read Kafka Was the Rage - Anatole Broyard's unfinished memoir of life in Greenwich Village just after WWII, where everyone was an intellectual and sex had just been discovered.

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 Metropolitan Life by Fran (not Annie) Lebowitz, a snarky little collection of vignettes about life in the big city way back when.

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 really weird D & D manual called Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual by Éliphas Lévi, half-poet, half-socialist, and all beard.

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 Sound of the City by musicologist and BBC DJ Charlie Gillett, a veritable bible for pop music nerds. Spoiler alert: Greg does not sing in this one (or any one, ever).

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 episode, we chat about what we've been reading besides the book we're supposed to be reading.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• The Archies with their hit song Sugar Sugar

• Chip Zdarsky and Erica Henderson's new-ish Jughead series

• Zombie Archie

• Coin - Op Comics

• Ghost World

• Is This How You See Me? by Jaime Hernandez

• Palomar by Gibert Hernandez

• Black Leopard, Red Wolf

• Room to Dream - a sort of autobiography of David Lynch

• Catching the Big Fish

• Dune

• Feast Your Eyes

What's Up Next

Sound of the City by Charlie Gillett Amazon | IndieBound

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 Silence by John Cage, an intensely charming (though sometimes confusing!) book about music theory (sort of) and mushroom hunting (definitely)

Our guest is Mark Schlipper - experimental/improv musician (and Moon Knight aficionado) whose current projects include drone rockers The Luna Moth, improv stoner-doom-noise-mininmalism Perish The Island, and various other other solo projects.

Support your local library! Like seriously.

Amazon | IndieBound

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Video of John Cage performing Water Walk

• American Masters documentary on John Cage

• Simple Men - movie by Hal Hartley

• Super Troopers - maybe the greatest movie of all time, depending on your definition of comedy.

• As Slow as Possible - this Cage piece is currently being performed in Halberstadt, Germany and is scheduled to complete in 2640.

• Black Mountain College

• John Cage - Lecture on the Weather

• Video Performance of 4'33"

• Cage's love letters to Merce Cunningham

• Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of the Titanic

• The Good Shepherd Center Chapel Performance Space - the home for experimental music in Seattle.

• Erik Satie - Vexations

• John Cale

• Brian Eno

• Terry Riley - In C

• Uncut Article about the Low Sessions

• Spike Jones

• Boots n' Cats

What's Up Next

Sound of the City by Charlie Gillett Amazon | IndieBound

What Song Did We Choose?

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 is another gossipy episode with a little bit about the tome we're about to read - Silence by John Cage

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 Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guaralnick a compendium of all things related to the musical genre, and most emphatically NOT about Motown.

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 just gossiped about this and that - though it all seems to come back to Bowie, as usual.

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 do a super quick roundup of our 2019 books and shout out some folks who are WAY ahead of us on the book list live from the floor of Podcon2, where we saw a bunch of great pdocasts and learned how to make this a little bit less of a mess.

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 The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford - a cheery little tome that's been called the "Consumer Reports of the Funeral Industry".

Amazon | IndieBound

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Our guest this episode is the hardest working man in show business, or at least the hardest working person who's been on this show - Levi Fuller, who's known for his bands Levi Fuller and the Library and the Luna Moth, and his quarterly Ball of Wax compilation, which gathers great music from all sorts of directions.

Stuff we Mentioned

Ball of Wax Audio Quarterly #25 - songs about books.

Bushwick Bookclub of Seattle

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Stiff by Mary Roach

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty and her guide on How to Make Your Death Plan

New Yorker article about Jessica Mitford

Mitford singing 'Right, Said Fred' with Maya Angelou

the etymology of the word 'wake'

"Safety" coffins

George Romero

Pure Cremation

Online cut-up generator

Dismal Fest in Seattle

Garden District Bookshop in New Orleans

What's Up Next

We start a streak of music books with Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick.

And here's our list of books for 2019!

What Song Did We Choose?

Levi presented us with his take on the book in "The Funerals Profession"

With these cut-up lyrics

At family contribute the funerals profession Through the special and navigated benefit no plenty able sadness and always with notice and more

without family tribute family back already With many services friends we direct him here and with music consistently dignity always

The Here about a body icon’s family memorial fans broke cremation gems funeral so the vast lots that public place be traditional We’ll next headline England

People want crematorium and legal occasion ignorance conscious call news a simply life ashes remember church unselfconscious throughout vast families

The Here about a body icon’s family memorial fans broke cremation gems funeral so the vast lots that public place be traditional We’ll next headline England

And his choice from Bowie:

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 In Cold Blood, a non-fiction novel about a gruesome killing in Kansas by Truman Capote who may have shared our fancy for wild speculation.

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 The Divided Self by R.D. Laing, a treatise about schizophrenia and injecting humanism into the science of psychology. And Greg says "So yeah" about 50 times.

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 Viz, the scatological UK comic that rose from hand-stapled obscurity to become a titan of juvenilia in the '80s and '90s. Plus, we reveal our ill-conceived conspiracy theories about the Bowie List, or lack thereof.

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 Berlin Alexanderplatz, a classic of German modernism by Alfred Doblin, and another trip to Berlin in the 'twenties for us.

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 Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood, a (semi-)fictional look at one of Bowie's obsessions - Berlin between the wars.

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 three issues from the second volume of the underground/art/indie/lowbrow/highbrow comic book compliation Raw, edited and published by Art Speigelman and Francoise Mouly. Also, Greg proves that an insufferable child becomes an insufferable adult.

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 the Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, a surprisingly accessible book about the discovery of documents from the very foundation of Christianity with a surprisingly unorthodox viewpoint. And, of course, we shirk the opportunity to learn something in favor of making terrible gnu puns.

Amazon | IndieBound

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Stuff we Mentioned

• New Yorker article on Elaine Pagels

• Gary Gnu

• The discovery of the Gnostic Gospels

• The sum of all knowledge about Gnosticism

• Gnostic Music! Current 93 album based on Thunder, Perfect Mind)

• Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen

• Fatima Prophecies

• Elaine Pagels' New Book - Why Religion?

• Revelations by Elaine Pagels

• Television - Tom Verlaine)

• Maus by Art Speigelmann

What's Up Next

Art Spiegelman and Francois Mouly's hugely influential comics anthology Raw), which ran from 1980 to 1991. Greg was lucky enough to buy a couple issues of and DUMB ENOUGH to not keep them.

What Song Did We Choose?

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're catching up on what we're reading and what magical things ONLY KRISTIANNE gets to see, and then we kvetch a bit about ebooks and audio books.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby

• NY Times Book Review - How Christians Destroyed the Ancient World

• The Byrds - Turn Turn Turn

• Our Hawksmoor Episode

• Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright

• Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen

• Strange Stars by Jason Heller

• Our interview with Chris O'Leary (@bowiesongs)

• Revelations by Elaine Pagels

• David Bowie Is

• Bowie Flipbook

• Word Bookstore in Brooklyn

What's Up Next

We're reading the Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, a surprisingly accessible book about the discovery of documents from the very foundation of Christianity with a surprisingly unorthodox viewpoint.

This time we read Keith Waterhouse's Billy Liar - the story of a dreamer in Northern England who just can't keep his stories straight.

We catch up with @manmademoon's choice for this month - Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell's (not H. Lewis Allways') masterful piece of reporting on poverty AND talk to our Virgilian guide through the songs of David Bowie - Chris O'Leary, whose Rebel Rebel is an essential reference for any Bowie fan.

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 Madame Bovary a groundbreaking (and salacious, we guess?) novel of one woman's struggle against bourgie norms. And Greg really apologizes about his Vitamin Flintheart.

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 Puckoon by Spike Milligan - a comic (well, you be the judge) tale of the troubles brought to a fictional Irish village by the Partition.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Edward G Robinson - why? Not really sure.

• The Goon Show

• Father Ted

• The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg

• Rebel Rebel - Chris O'Leary's excellent companion to Bowie's work from '64 - 76 - also check out Pushing Ahead of the Dame for song-by-song-goodness

• Oh, and there's a Puckoon movie that we totally forgot to mention!

Excellent Tweets

@bowiebookpod On a recent pod you suggested that @ManMadeMoon might’ve picked Puckoon for March because of St Patrick’s day. Given it focuses on the impact of a hard border in Ireland the choice may also be topical for other reasons https://t.co/ffsQZf4VNH

— Niall Mullen (@mullen_niall) April 3, 2018

Three Stooges meets Comedy of Errors meets Father Ted, alternating between total slapstick, sharp satire, and wit so dry you start to wonder if it’s coming to a joke at all until you realize that you yourself might be the butt of it. And of course it’s broadly offensive to all.

— The Lark's Purr (@thelarkspurr) April 4, 2018

What's Up Next

The original steamy potboiler - Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

What Song Did We Choose?

This time we read Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess, a giant, sprawling look at the 20th century, featuring one of the most romantic exorcisms every committed to print. 

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 catch up on the discussion of The Fire Next Time on the socials media, talk about other stuff we've been putting in our eyes, and looking forward to what's next on @manmademoon's list - Puckoon by Spike Milligan, and what's next on ours - Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Our Episode on The Fire Next Time

• A Raisin in The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

• Beloved by Toni Morrison

• Chris Rock reads James Baldwin

• Levar Burton recreates James Baldwin's interview with the Paris Review

• Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

• This Will Be My Undoing

• Kara Walker's grim masterpiece 'Katastwof Karavan' in New Orleans

• John Okomfrah's Precarity installation

• John Henry Days - also Colson Whitehead

• Figuring History at the Seattle Art Museum

• The Goon Show

What's Up Next

Our next book is Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess, a favorite of Bowie's - we covered Clockwork Orange the other Burgess book on the list way back when in our first episode! We'll publish our discussion at the end of the month - including more discussions of romantic exorcisms!

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 history of Berlin in the 1920's that is as diverse and roiling as its subject. And mispronounced many things.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Chaucer's Books

• M - the movie) - watch on YouTube

• M - the graphic novel

• The Threepenny Opera

• Bertold Brecht

• Lotte Lenya

• Kurt Weill

• Bobby Darin's version of Mac the Knife

• Bowie, Iggy and Expressionism

• David Bowie's Berlin

• Bowie's Berlin years

• Bowie in Baal, one of Brecht's early works

• Friedrich's other books - City of Nets, a history of Hollywood in the 1940s and Going Crazy

• Pushing Ahead of the Dame has a great article about Bowie in Berlin and the making of the song Where Are We Now?

• Look Who's Back

• Berlin Babylon

What's Up Next

We'll be back with an episode to catch up on the #bowiebookclub, who are reading James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, which we talked about last August - listen to the episode here

Our next book coming up is Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess, a favorite of Bowie's - we covered Clockwork Orange the other Burgess book on the list way back when in our first episode!

What Song Did We Choose?

Another thing we couldn't really pronounce...

In this episode, we gab about Hawksmoor and the next books coming up for #bowiebookclub and from our own list. And Greg apologizes a lot too.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Plenty of good ideas about the end of Hawksmoor - check out #bowiebookclub and our twitter page to catch up on the conversations.

  • Is Dyer out of time and still murdery? (@KJBolden / @MikePBlanchard)
  • Do the murders run on a 400-year cycle? (@rotblot)
  • Maybe London itself is the evil force and Dyer is just a tool? (@Martin65)
  • Everyone (well, Greg, at least) agrees that this is very Twin-Peaksy. Did Bowie introduce Lynch to the book? (@mr_duffin)

• Bowie talking about Hawksmoor! (@maccazgrl)

• Who would you cast as Hawksmoor? Idris Alba is a wise choice (@JohnF80174692). We went for Anthony Hopkins as Dyer (kind of a gimme, but you know.)

• the London Review of Books has a great wrap of the book and the conversations around it on their blog.

• Lots of new song ideas:

  • A Foggy Day in London (@I_Joanna_I)
  • I thought of Outside a lot, also the Man Who Sold The World, and I can hear Quicksand playing over the closing credits. Side two of Heroes fits nice also. (@eclecticbob) (we nicked Quicksand for our closing credits, thanks!)
  • Got to be Width of a Circle (@Typo47221555)
  • Agree with those who say Outside, and for me the “song” is the Algeria Touchshriek interlude. (@ThePleiades1)
  • Lyrics from Blackstar - “spirit rose and stepped aside…another took his place” (@opusfive)

And of course:

tis a pity she was a hawk pic.twitter.com/7EqMeYjtmm

— Crayon to Crayon (@CrayonToCrayon) January 25, 2018

• Peter Ackroyd has a new book coming out in May - Queer City

• If you're in the mood for creepy minimalist ambient music, check out the Hawksmoor episode of Greg's other podcast Too Tired to Say Anything

• We had a nice chat on Bookhub last week about Bowie and books

• To be clear, Ian Sinclair is NOT DEAD. (whew). Greg just finished his Ghost Milk and is excited to start The Last London once his brain recovers.

• Derek Jacobi doesn't believe in Shakespeare - he may be right

• The next #bowiebookclub book is The Fire Next Time, an incredible, powerful book that we discussed last summer. Really looking forward to revisiting it. Folks outside the US are still looking for a copy if you want to help out.

• We're reading some other books for Black History Month:

  • John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead - Kristianne is listening to his Underground Railroad too.
  • We Were Eight Years in Power
  • The Fire This Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward
  • This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America Book by Morgan Jerkins

• We forgot to mention it on the podcast, but @joanna__pearson put together some awesome Bowie Book Club badges with all proceeds going to charity!

• Our next book is Before the Deluge by Otto Friedrich, a portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, which we'll discuss in great and discursive detail at the end of the month as is our wont.

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
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd, a wildly entertaining story of occultism, the churches of London, police procedures and how time isn't as straightforward as you might think.

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 Inside the Whale, a book of literary criticism by George Orwell, who we've decided was a time traveller (Netflix, get in touch).
 

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 very entertaining tract about consciousness, hallucinations, poetry, religion and a crackpot theory that ties them all together - in short, what you expected to read in college as a liberal arts major. It's Julian Jayne's magnum opus - The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Octavia Books
• Rhinelander case
• Wikipedia about the Reconstruction
• Thursday's Child video
• Pushing Ahead of the Dame (the greatest site ever)

What's Up Next

Hot dang! It's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes. We've all got a bit of reading to do.

What Song Did We Choose?

With a little bit of debate, we ended up with a song that is not about Ertha Kitt.

Permalink

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 The Bridge a series of high-falutin' modernist poems written in the late 1920's by the apparantly oft-inebriate scion of a candy empire, Hart Crane.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Stephen Crane did not write this book.

• Hart Crane at poets.org

• Hart Crane on wikipedia

• TS Eliot - the Wasteland

• The Transcendentalists

• Nicholas Roeg

• The Man Who Fell to Earth - novel)

What's Up Next

Passing by Nella Larsen

What Song Did We Choose?

This episode, we picked "Conversation Piece" for a bunch of loosely thought out reasons. Mostly just so we didn't have to listen to Bowie do reggae.

The amazing Bowie site Pushing Ahead of the Dame has a great article about the song too.

Permalink

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 that was published in 1962, but speaks with incredible clarity to the events of this month and to the essential question that our country has never been able to resolve - The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

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Stuff we Mentioned

• James Baldwin in Turkey - Photographs by Sedat Pakay at the Northwest African-American Museum

• The Paris Review Interview with James Baldwin

• Baldwin vs. Buckley

• The Fire This Time

• I Am Not Your Negro

• Between the World and Me

• White Rage

• White Trash

• The New Jim Crow

• Southern Poverty Law Center

• Showing up for Racial Justice (SURJ)

• ACLU People Power

What's Up Next

The Bridge by the poet Hart Crane

What Song Did We Choose?

We didn't really choose a song to go with the book this time, but the song that we ended up listening to while planning this was "Subterraneans"

Permalink

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 got some lunch with the most personable of New York poets, Frank O'Hara, who seemed to know everybody and everything going on around him.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• New York School

• Personism

• Frank O'Hara's acquired accent

• What Frank O'Hara Reveals about Internet Brains

• Magic and Loss

• Danny Kaye

• Patricia Lockwood on Twitter

• Drift on Inn It's closed! Sad face.

• Pushing Ahead of the Dame

• The Three Penny Opera written by Eliasbeth Hauptmann, not that jackanape Bertolt Brecht!

• Krazy Kat

• I Am Not Your Negro

What's Up Next

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

What Song Did We Choose?

Multiple songs! One for each poem we chose.

Greg picked this to go with the "Three-penny Opera"

There's also a pretty great version from the Space Oddity 45 on YouTubes:

Kristianne picked this to go with "Steps"

Permalink

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 tale of youngmen and sexmoney (and many other ecstatically compounded words) - City of Night by John Rechy

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Stuff we Mentioned

• LA Woman

• Island Books - Mercer Island WA

• Rechy's Autobiography

• NY Times Review

• Dan Savage

• Independent article on John Rechy

• Eddie Izzard

• It Gets Better

• My Own Private Idaho - "Van Sant originally wrote the screenplay in the 1970s, but discarded it after reading John Rechy's 1963 novel City of Night and concluding that Rechy's treatment of the subject of street hustlers was better than his own"

• Why did Kristianne reference Gilligan's Island?

What's Up Next

• The Selected Poems of Frank O'Hara by Frank O'Hara

What Song Did We Choose?

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 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. FINALLY A BOOK WE LIKED.

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Stuff we Mentioned

• Juno Diaz interview on Fresh Air

• Juno Diaz interview from In our Times

• Edwidge Danticat interviews Juno Diaz

• "Fukus Americanus" in the Nation

• Miss Burma

• Blitzed not Wired

• David Byrne's 'Here Lives Love'

• THE GREATEST THING EVER: Love and Rockets comics by Los Bros Hernandez)

• David Bowie's Mustique estate up for rent!

• Indie Bookstore Day

• Liberty By Books

• Eagle Harbor Books

• Twitter magic!

• The Complete David Bowie (as always)

What's Up Next

• City of Night by John Rechy

What Song Did We Choose?