I once wrote a letter to the editor (published, and I was young enough to be excited by that) of ROLLING STONE complimenting them on their hiring of Sheffield, whose excellent, passionate and informative music criticism I had been introduced to via his "Spin Record Guide" entries, as a full-time staff critic. Decades later, I'm reminded why I was such a fan of this particular professional fan: This book is impressively knowledgeable, affirming Sheffield's self-confessed nerd/Bowie-geek status; but he saves himself from the usual obnoxious-seeming nerd-insularity/exclusiveness of name-dropping, lyric-quoting, and obscure fact-referencing by doing it all in such a clearly generously, enthused spirit; he's looking to initiate you into his subject, not remind you that he's initiated and you're not, or at least not as fully as he. He's a true, unabashedly obsessive fan for whom being right or wrong about anything (and he's wrong at least about THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, but he argues his anti-Roeg position well) takes second place to sharing how wonderful an experience the music is, whether you take him up on his open invitation to hear it from his very sensitive, articulate perspective or not.

Still miss him. This book was a delight and I learned a bunch of things that I didn't already know, baby of the 70s that I am.

3.5🌟

I know David Bowie, but I don't knooooowwww Bowie the way Rob Sheffield knows Bowie. This is indeed a love letter to Bowie and all his incarnations. It's beautiful and rough around the edges because he wrote it in a month, and I enjoyed it. I'm just not as sold as with his other books. Then again, I'm not a Bowie encyclopedia. I love music. I love Sheffield's writing. I really like this book. I can't go the full love though. I'm glad it exists in the world. If you like any kind of Bowie, you should definitely read it. In fact, if you love music, read it. I promise you will experience one of the L-words I used.

A heartfelt tribute written by a fan as a sort of extended Rolling Stone feature. Better than any biography of rock's finest chameleon.

I think there's something about Bowie that means trying to put his life into a book just doesn't really work, but this book did a much better job than most I've (tried to) read about him. It's short, and sticks to Bowie's career, rather than going into wild bouts of speculation about every single aspect of Bowie's private life. The only real 'speculation' there is in the book is in Sheffields own interpretations of Bowie's music, which came off as reasonable and interesting to read. On the whole, I really enjoyed it.

There were some little issues though; I would have liked more than half a paragraph about Labyninth, and I felt like there could have been a few more pages on The Next Day and Blackstar. I also would have really liked to hear about Bowie's relationship with Japan and Asian style, but the book doesn't touch on that at all, which was disappointing. Also, Sheffield kept randomly bringing up Kanye West for some reason. I didn't really get why, and it felt a bit weird, as Kanye was the only modern musician he mentions.

But yes, this is definitely the best Bowie book I've read.

It is unclear to me whether it is the fact that I read the Dutch translation, or whether the style of the author is the reason why some parts of the book didn't appeal to me. In part I think it is the translation because some sentences sounded very "Dunglish" but some of the stories just seemed useless, they added very little. And then other stories are exciting. All in all, I quite enjoyed reading this book.

Review to follow