It has been an interesting day.
This Monday-flavored Tuesday was a hell of a kickoff to the week. I got a promotion at work. More work, more difficult work, and no further increase in remuneration, at least not that I have been made aware of as of yet. I also hit an achievement at work that actually got recognized. Which was very nice.
I also packed away the Nerd Tree. Kept out only my tiny Niffler friend to keep me company. Cleaned all the dust off the top of my desk, as I am wont to do after a long weekend. And washed my hands so many times my skin hurts, even with the Working Hands lotion/cream I use. Oh well.
Perhaps part of it is the weather? The weather has been more akin to a true winter. Which is odd only because the Orange Line used to dance above Tampa but now we have freeze warnings for most of the week. And a forecast of actual, possible snow in the forecast. Snow. In Central Florida. It is bizarre. I actually got to layer clothing and wear a scarf today. It was lovely. Now, if I could only get this damn cough to go away. But that’s what I get for going to a place that had horses, a shit ton of trees, hay, a bonfire, and fireworks. My poor sinuses.
Got to see friends from Texas tonight. An evening spent with fellow nerdlings laughing and possibly scaring Muggles at an out of the way Olive Garden. My stomach hurts a bit. Somewhere between the laughter, the fifth glass of water, or that tiramisu I shared with my Darling Wife is the cause, I’m sure.
We’ve dropped our dining companions back at their hotel. They head back to their home state tomorrow morning; I’m glad I got to see them while they were in Florida. They’ve also made me want to visit LegoLand at least once.
Now we head back towards home with the car windows cracked just enough to make it breezy. We have the heat on, toasting our toes. It’s pleasant.
And while my Darling Wife drives, and sings along to the radio, I get to thinking. My coworker mentioned via an excited email that David Bowie’s son has started a digital book club. Furthermore, there is a list of the late Bowie’s top one hundred books. Being the bibliophile I am, and always looking for reading suggestions, I was more than ready to hunt down said list and see what it brought.
Wonder not a moment more, because here it is: David Bowie’s Top 100 books:
The Age of American Unreason, Susan Jacoby, 2008
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz, 2007
The Coast of Utopia (trilogy), Tom Stoppard, 2007
Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945, Jon Savage, 2007
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters, 2002
The Trial of Henry Kissinger, Christopher Hitchens, 2001
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler, 1997
A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1890-1924, Orlando Figes, 1997
The Insult, Rupert Thomson, 1996
Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon, 1995
The Bird Artist, Howard Norman, 1994
Kafka Was The Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, Anatole Broyard, 1993
Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective, Arthur C. Danto, 1992
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, Camille Paglia, 1990
David Bomberg, Richard Cork, 1988
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, Peter Guralnick, 1986
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin, 1986
Hawksmoor, Peter Ackroyd, 1985
Nowhere To Run: The Story of Soul Music, Gerri Hirshey, 1984
Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter, 1984
Money, Martin Amis, 1984
White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1984
Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes, 1984
The Life and Times of Little Richard, Charles White, 1984
A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn, 1980
A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole, 1980
Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1980
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler, 1980
Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess, 1980
Raw (a ‘graphix magazine’) 1980-91
Viz (magazine) 1979 –
The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, 1979
Metropolitan Life, Fran Lebowitz, 1978
In Between the Sheets, Ian McEwan, 1978
Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, ed. Malcolm Cowley, 1977
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, 1976
Tales of Beatnik Glory, Ed Sanders, 1975
Mystery Train, Greil Marcus, 1975
Selected Poems, Frank O’Hara, 1974
Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s, Otto Friedrich, 1972
In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Re-definition of Culture, George Steiner, 1971
Octobriana and the Russian Underground, Peter Sadecky, 1971
The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, Charlie Gillete, 1970
The Quest For Christa T, Christa Wolf, 1968
Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock, Nik Cohn, 1968
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, 1967
Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg, 1967
Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr., 1966
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote, 1965
City of Night, John Rechy, 1965
Herzog, Saul Bellow, 1964
Puckoon, Spike Milligan, 1963
The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford, 1963
The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, Yukio Mishima, 1963
The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin, 1963
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, 1962
Inside the Whale and Other Essays, George Orwell, 1962
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark, 1961
Private Eye (magazine) 1961 –
On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, Douglas Harding, 1961
Silence: Lectures and Writing, John Cage, 1961
Strange People, Frank Edwards, 1961
The Divided Self, R. D. Laing, 1960
All The Emperor’s Horses, David Kidd, 1960
Billy Liar, Keith Waterhouse, 1959
The Leopard, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, 1958
On The Road, Jack Kerouac, 1957
The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard, 1957
Room at the Top, John Braine, 1957
A Grave for a Dolphin, Alberto Denti di Pirajno, 1956
The Outsider, Colin Wilson, 1956
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, 1949
The Street, Ann Petry, 1946
Black Boy, Richard Wright, 1945
Now, looking at that, I feel like a dunce. I know maybe a dozen of them offhand and read maybe half that. He had some eclectic tastes, Bowie did. I’ve no idea if I would read all of them, if given the chance. I’ll go through what the library, interwebs, and friends have available to borrow.
We’re nearly home, and it’s thankfully shy of midnight, so we are likely to go home, shed the clothes of the day and crawl into bed. Because tired.
Have a lovely evening my chilly darlings!
I had a blast, thought it wasn’t the smoothest evening. It’s always nice to be around others that share hobbies or are like minded. And, let’s be honest, things afire delights some primitive little monkey part of my mind that just enjoys the sky shiny boom things. And, on a cold night, who doesn’t like a bonfire? I was reminded that I am terrible at remembering to introduce people to one another. Whoops!
Eva Phoenix: 2018 and Beyond 