BOB DYLAN’S 40 FAVORITE BOOKS

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From an article in Far Out Magazine -out of the UK–

Bob Dylan’s 40 FAVORITE BOOKS

  1. ‘The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club’ by Sonny Barger
  2. ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy
  3. ‘Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63’ by Taylor Branch
  4. ‘Tropic of Cancer’ by Henry Miller
  5. ‘Stories’ by Anton Chekhov
  6. ‘On War’ by Carl von Clausewitz
  7. ‘Victory’ by Joseph Conrad
  8. ‘The Complete Poetry and Prose’ by John Donne
  9. ‘The Anchor Anthology of French Poetry’ by Angel Flores
  10. ‘Jerry Garcia: The Collected Artwork’ by Jerry Garcia
  11. ‘One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding’ by Robert Gover
  12. ‘The White Goddess’ by Robert Graves
  13. ‘Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps’ by Emmett Grogan
  14. ‘Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley’ by Peter Guralnick
  15. ‘Bound for Glory’ by Woody Guthrie
  16. ‘The Odyssey’ by Homer
  17. ‘Mexico City Blues’ by Jack Kerouac
  18. ‘On The Road’ by Jack Kerouac
  19. ‘Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards’ by Al Kooper
  20. ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’ by Alan Lomax
  21. ‘Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz”’ by Alan Lomax
  22. ‘Girl from the North Country’ by Conor McPherson
  23. ‘Moby Dick’ by Herman Melville
  24. ‘The Blues Line: A Collection of Blues Lyrics’ by Eric Sackheim
  25. ‘Naked Lunch’ by William S. Burroughs
  26. ‘Woody Guthrie: Radical American Patriot’ by Bill Nowlin
  27. ‘Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta’ by Robert Palmer
  28. ‘All Access: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Photography of Ken Regan’ by Ken Regan
  29. ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ by Erich Maria Remarque
  30. ‘The Oxford Book of English Verse’ by Christopher Ricks
  31. ‘A Season in Hell & The Drunken Boat’ by Arthur Rimbaud
  32. ‘Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems’ by Allen Ginsberg
  33. ‘Confessions of a Yakuza’ by Junichi Saga
  34. ‘The American Songbag & Selected Poems’ by Carl Sandburg
  35. ‘Honkers and Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues’ by Arnold Shaw
  36. ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ by John Steinbeck
  37. ‘The Dave Stewart Songbook: The Stories Behind The Songs’ by Dave Stewart
  38. ‘Thucydides: The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians’ by Thucydides
  39. ‘Poems’ by Henry Timrod
  40. ‘The Conscience of the Folk Revival: The Writings of Israel “Izzy” Young’ by Scott Barrett

14 responses to “BOB DYLAN’S 40 FAVORITE BOOKS”

    • I read War and Peace last year- I am going to read it again this year- I read an article on it and it was the author’s favorite book- he points out there are like 330 fairly short chapters and he reads it one chapter a day- and you can cover it in a year.

    • Good for you, Hans. Books like that really pull you into the story. Some books you don’t want to end. Last year I read 1Q84 by Murakami with is 3 fair-sized volumes and didn’t want it to end.

    • You seem to get a lot accomplished for no attention span! You’re a human dynamo. I’m trying to organize my poems for submission for a chapbook and need to get some index cards for it. I’ve pared 650 poems down to 85 but they want a max of 40.

  3. Cool list Hans. I always threatened to do a book take. I did do one. Of the books that Bob liked I read.
    Grapes
    On The Road
    Sonny Barger
    Lunch
    Woody
    Odyssey
    Moby
    Last Train
    Did I like them all? Most of them.

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