New Year brings new thoughts. I'm not one for resolutions generally but having been doing this for almost eight years, do feel some sort of inwardly generated responsibility to start new series to help try keep this fresh. One of the best presents I received this Christmas was this, from my sister.
It's now almost four years since Bowie left the planet. It still feels a sore and poignant loss somehow. He made such a specific, inimitable contribution. This, John O'Connell's documentation of his 100 favourite books is a reminder of that as well as some, scant consolation, reminding us what a great thinker he was if nothing else. Each selection has a chapter to itself, documenting the nature of the book focused upon, why it might have been important to Bowie and wonderfully, a track of his to listen to while reading it, I'll record them, one chapter, one day, at a time. By the time we're done it should be Spring.
To start with, A Clockwork Orange, an unsurprising choice. The parallels between Alex and Ziggy are clear as lurid, dystopian technicolor. The Kubrick film came out five months before the album. The chapter here about the book explores the differences between it and the film, why both cast an enduring spell on Bowie, (the song here is from Blackstar, his final album), and made me want to go back to the original one more time.
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