MARIANNE FAITHFULL
Top Ten Books

[onegrandbooks.com]

From naïve ingenue at 17 to strung out junkie, the trajectory of Marianne Faithfull’s early career was paralleled over the course of her most famous songs — including her 1964 classic, “As Tears Go By,” written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and the 1969 single, “Sister Morphine,” released toward the end of a drug-fueled relationship with Jagger. After defeating her demons, Faithfull reemerged with the spectacular rock album, Broken English, in 1984, and has since appeared in a multitude of film roles while continuing to perform. Now living in Paris, she was a recipient of France’s Ordre des Artes et des Lettres in 2009.

1 — WHEN THING FALL APART Pema Chodron
"I get a lot of help from Pema Chodron. She is the student of Chögyam Trungpa, who was Allen Ginsberg’s guru, and it was Allen who taught me to meditate, along with many other lessons from Buddhism."

2 — JUST KIDS Patti Smith
"Simply brilliant. I am a friend of Patti’s, and a huge fan, and I loved it."

3 — MEMOIRS OF HADRIAN Marguerite Yourcenar
"A difficult book to read — it’s incredibly tragic — but I sort of managed it, and I’m very nearly at the end now."

4 — RABBIT ANGSTROM: THE FOUR NOVELS John Updike
"They’ve just been a delight to me as long as I’ve known about them. I’ve just read the last one, John Updike is brilliant."

5 — THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO Nick Cave
"One of Nick Cave’s many novels — very dark, of course, rather like his songs, but very good."

6 — THE PURSUIT OF LOVE Nancy Mitford
"Nancy Mitford is one of my favorite writers. This is the first of her books that was successful. It’s delightful, it’s funny, it’s charming and really witty! I read it again and again."

7 — THE GAMBLER Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"It’s one of my favorite of Dostoyevsky’s stories, really frightening but it’s an incredible book."

8 — WILL IN THE WORLD: HOW SHAKESPEARE BECAME SHAKESPEARE Stephen Greenblatt
"I love Shakespeare, and this is perhaps the best book that’s ever been written about him. It’s a fantastic way of talking about Will, and his whole life and career. Completely fascinating."

9 — TWO YEARS EIGHT MONTHS AND TWENTY-EIGHT NIGHTS Salman Rushdie
"Salman is brilliant at fantasy (he’s also brilliant at reality), but I think this is my favorite fantastical magical book he’s ever written — but who knows what’s coming?"

10 — BRAVE NEW WORLD Aldous Huxley
"Obviously I read this when I was very young, with Heaven and Hell, and then years later, a friend of mine in Paris — a rare book dealer and musician — turned me on to all his other books, and I was just knocked flat. They are so good."

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-10-01 09:15 by Redhotcarpet.

Broken English was released in 1979 not 1984.

who cares

11. LIFE, by Keith Richards.
-- 'Fascinating to learn what Keith and I got up to.'

Aldous Huxley is on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Brave New World has lots of Shakespeare references (including the title), so it makes sense Marianne would like it. Reminds me that Mick was inspired to write Undercover of the Night by William Burroughs’s surreal novel Cities of the Red Night, and that Burroughs is also on the Sgt. Pepper cover. Nice when rock stars are littérateurs. Stones PR guy Paul Wasserman said in Barbara Charone’s book, “I didn’t expect Keith to be so literate. I figured he be one of those `oh wow’ musicians.”

Well, I have read Dostoyevski of course. But not "The Gambler". And Sir Salman too. The Satanic Verses. But I must admit I gave up about halfway in. Which I rarely do.