Bruce Springsteen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Songwriter & Now Memoirist

Image by Michele Lucon, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Bruce Spring­steen turns 67 today. And next week his long-await­ed mem­oir, Born to Run, will final­ly get into read­ers’ hands. In advance of that lit­er­ary event, we’re look­ing back at a 2014 inter­view with The New York Times, print­ed short­ly before Spring­steen pub­lished his chil­dren’s book, Out­law Pete. 

The inter­view takes you inside Spring­steen’s lit­er­ary world, reveal­ing what books he reads, which books he loves, and what authors have shaped his song­writ­ing (and like­ly his own lit­er­ary style): The Times asks: “Who is your favorite nov­el­ist of all time, and your favorite nov­el­ist writ­ing today?;” “Who are your favorite New Jer­sey writ­ers?;” “What’s your favorite mem­oir by a musi­cian?;” “What book, if any, most influ­enced your deci­sion to become a song­writer and musi­cian or con­tributed to your artis­tic devel­op­ment?” The books he namechecks along the way include the fol­low­ing:

• Amer­i­can Pas­toral, I Mar­ried a Com­mu­nist and Sabbath’s The­ater, by Philip Roth
• Anna Karen­i­na, by Leo Tol­stoy
• Blood Merid­i­an, by Cor­mac McCarthy
• Chron­i­cles, by Bob Dylan
• Last Train to Mem­phis: The Rise of Elvis Pres­ley, by Peter Gural­nick
• Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whit­man
• Life, by Kei­th Richards
• Lone­ly Hearts of the Cos­mos, by Den­nis Over­bye
• Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez
• Moby-Dick, by Her­man Melville

• Mys­tery Train: Images of Amer­i­ca in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, by Greil Mar­cus
• The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov, by Fyo­dor Dos­toyevsky
• Soul Min­ing: A Musi­cal Life, by Daniel Lanois
• The Com­plete Short Sto­ries, by Flan­nery O’Con­nor
• The His­to­ry of West­ern Phi­los­o­phy, by Bertrand Rus­sell
• The Nov­els of Jim Thomp­son
• The Sports­writer, Inde­pen­dence Day and The Lay of the Land, by Richard Ford
• The Sto­ries of Chekhov, by Anton Chekhov

You can read the inter­view in its entire­ty here, and find some of the clas­sic books he men­tions in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices. His mem­oir, Born to Run, will be offi­cial­ly released on Sep­tem­ber 27th. The com­pan­ion album, Chap­ter and Verse, is out today.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Heat Map­ping the Rise of Bruce Spring­steen: How the Boss Went Viral in a Pre-Inter­net Era

Springsteen’s Favorite Books & Read­ing List