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Named one of Entertainment Weekly�s 12 biggest music memoirs this fall. �An artful and wildly enthralling path for Bowie fans in particular and book lovers in general.� �Publishers Weekly (starred review) �The only art I�ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.� ?David Bowie Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities. In 100 short essays, music journalist John O�Connell studies each book on Bowie�s list and contextualizes it in the artist�s life and work. How did the power imbued in a single suit of armor in The Iliad impact a man who loved costumes, shifting identity, and the siren song of the alter-ego? How did The Gnostic Gospels inform Bowie�s own hazy personal cosmology? How did the poems of T.S. Eliot and Frank O�Hara, the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and Anthony Burgess, the comics of The Beano and The Viz, and the groundbreaking politics of James Baldwin influence Bowie�s lyrics, his sound, his artistic outlook? How did the 100 books on this list influence one of the most influential artists of a generation? Heartfelt, analytical, and totally original, Bowie�s Bookshelf is one part epic reading guide and one part biography of a music legend.