Bruce Springsteen's Reading List
The musician and author of the new picture book "Outlaw Pete" likes reading about cosmology: "I find men and women struggling to answer the deepest questions we can ask freeing."
Open in WellRead Daily app →By the Book: Bruce Springsteen (2014)
NYT By the Book column (2014-10-30).
Source: www.nytimes.com
Herman Melville · 1851 · Buy on Amazon
"I just finished Moby-Dick, which scared me off for a long time due to the hype of its difficulty. I found it to be a beautiful boy's adventure story and not that difficult to read. I never wanted it to end."
Gabriel Garcia Marquez · Buy on Amazon
"Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It simply touched on so many aspects of human love."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky · Buy on Amazon
"I like the Russians, the Chekhov short stories, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. I never read any of them until the past four years, and found them to be thoroughly psychologically modern. Personal favorites: The Brothers Karamazov."
Leo Tolstoy · 1877 · Buy on Amazon
"Personal favorites: The Brothers Karamazov and, of course, Anna Karenina."
Cormac McCarthy · 1985 · Buy on Amazon
"Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian remains a watermark in my reading. It's the combination of Faulkner and Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns that gives the book its spark for me."
Walt Whitman · Buy on Amazon
"The summer always makes me want to pick up Leaves of Grass for a while and sit on the front porch. I come away happier."
Keith Richards · Buy on Amazon
"it's hard to beat Keith Richards's love of music that shines through in Life."
Bob Dylan · Buy on Amazon
"Of course I loved Bob Dylan's Chronicles. It made me proud to be a musician."
Greil Marcus · Buy on Amazon
"At the top of my list remains Greil Marcus's Mystery Train"
Peter Guralnick · Buy on Amazon
"followed closely by Peter Guralnick's Last Train to Memphis"
John Steinbeck · 1939 · Buy on Amazon
"I read The Grapes of Wrath very late, long after I'd written the song Ghost of Tom Joad. However, it ended up being everything I'd hoped it to be."
Saul Bellow · Buy on Amazon
"I loved The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow, and someone just gave me Henderson the Rain King, so that may be up next."
Bertrand Russell · Buy on Amazon
"The book that turned me on to philosophy was Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy."
Favorite books (2019)
Favorite books recommended by Bruce Springsteen, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/bruce-springsteen-favorite-books/.
Source: radicalreads.com
Sarah Bakewell (also rec’d by Bruce Springsteen ) · Buy on Amazon
L. Frank Baum · Buy on Amazon
"The first book I read was The Wizard of Oz , one lazy summer on my front porch on Randolph Street in New Jersey. I remember being thrilled by the book and the act of reading. Over time my most beloved character became the great and powerful Oz himself…He’s a carny phony, in way over his head, who manages to pull it off anyway."
Saul Bellow (also rec’d by Philip Roth ) · Buy on Amazon
Eric Clapton · Buy on Amazon
Fyodor Dostoevsky (also rec’d by Ernest Hemingway ) · Buy on Amazon
Bob Dylan (READ: The Books Bob Dylan Digs ) · Buy on Amazon
Richard Ford (also rec’d by Philip Seymour Hoffman ) · Buy on Amazon
"I love the way Richard Ford writes about New Jersey. The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land are all set on my stomping grounds and, besides being poignant and hilarious, nail the Jersey Shore perfectly."
Richard Ford · Buy on Amazon
Richard Ford (also rec’d by Philip Seymour Hoffman ) · Buy on Amazon
Peter Guralnick (also rec’d by Bob Dylan ) · Buy on Amazon
Daniel Lanois · Buy on Amazon
"Soul Mining gives insights into the making of music I found unique from any other book out there."
Michael Lewis · Buy on Amazon
Dale Maharidge · Buy on Amazon
Dale Maharidge · Buy on Amazon
"Foreword by Springsteen."
Greil Marcus (also rec’d by David Bowie & Kim Gordon ) · Buy on Amazon
Gabriel García Márquez (also rec’d by Bruce Springsteen & Rose McGowan ) · Buy on Amazon
"It simply touched on so many aspects of human love."
Cormac McCarthy (also rec’d by Bruce Springsteen , Kazuo Ishiguro , Nick Cave & Stephen King ) · Buy on Amazon
Cormac McCarthy · Buy on Amazon
Herman Melville (also rec’d by Bob Dylan , Bruce Springsteen , John Irving , Norman Mailer , Patti Smith , Penn Jillette , Ray Bradbury , Steve Jobs & Tilda Swinton ) · Buy on Amazon
"I just finished Moby-Dick , which scared me off for a long time due to the hype of its difficulty. I found it to be a beautiful boy’s adventure story and not that difficult to read. Warning: You will learn more about whales than you have ever wished to know. On the other hand, I never wanted it to end."
Jim Miller · Buy on Amazon
Geoffrey O’Brien · Buy on Amazon
"Sonata for Jukebox , by Geoffrey O’Brien, has some lovely chapters in it, particularly its opening discussions of Burt Bacharach’s career."
Flannery O’Connor · Buy on Amazon
"The short stories of Flannery O’Connor landed hard on me. You could feel within them the unknowability of God, the intangible mysteries of life that confounded her characters, and which I find by my side every day. They contained the dark Gothicness of my childhood and yet made me feel fortunate to sit at the center of this swirling black puzzle, stars reeling overhead, the earth barely beneath us."
Dennis Overbye · Buy on Amazon
"For cosmology, Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos , by Dennis Overbye, was one of my first favorites. I find men and women struggling to answer the deepest questions we can ask freeing. It also puts in scale whatever my small problems of the day might be."
Keith Richards · Buy on Amazon
"I’m not familiar with the musician/novelist, but as far as memoirs, it’s hard to beat Keith Richards’s love of music that shines through in Life ."
Mariano Rivera · Buy on Amazon
Philip Roth (also rec’d by John Waters ) · Buy on Amazon
Philip Roth · Buy on Amazon
Philip Roth · Buy on Amazon
Bertrand Russell · Buy on Amazon
Andrew Ross Sorkin · Buy on Amazon
John Steinbeck (also rec’d by Bruce Springsteen & Nelson Mandela ) · Buy on Amazon
"Springsteen took inspiration from The Grapes of Wrath for his second solo guitar album, The Ghost of Tom Joad."
Leo Tolstoy (also rec’d by Ernest Hemingway , Philip Roth & Susan Sontag ) · Buy on Amazon
Leo Tolstoy · Buy on Amazon
Walt Whitman (also rec’d by Bob Dylan , Bruce Springsteen , Lisa Simpson & Maya Angelou ) · Buy on Amazon
"The summer always makes me want to pick up Leaves of Grass for a while and sit on the front porch. I come away happier."