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sarahabein.bsky.social · @sarahabein.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated David Bowie: A Life 6/10

Though I learned a fair amount about Bowie by reading this, I felt like I had to take some of the tales with a grain of salt. This biography is done in an oral history style with very little analysis of the interviewee's words done by the author. Everyone has an agenda, and there's not much here that makes note of that. Also, some of the quotes could have done with some editing to get more to the point — there's a lot of "But <i>I</i> was the most special and important, and only <i>I</i> knew him, and here, let me plug what I'm doing" going on. (Not everyone is like that, thankfully.) And <i>wow</i> do the interviewees hate Angie, his first wife. What is said about her implies that they were all just put off by her having ambitions of her own, as though she were somehow not allowed this. <br><br>That said, there were still enough interesting bits to keep me reading, and I liked hearing about his later career (though less time is spent on it), as I had fallen off paying attention after <i>Hours</i> until <i>The Next Day</i> came out. <br><br>It wasn't love for me, but the book is worth a read for the Bowie die-hards out there who can read between the lines and already know a lot of the context.

#book

Published 2026-08-18 22:16 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere