Patti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

Image of Pat­ti Smith per­form­ing in Rio de Janeiro by Dai­go Oli­va

As a lit­tle girl, Pat­ti Smith found lib­er­a­tion in words — first through the bed­time prayers she made up her­self, and lat­er in books. “I was com­plete­ly smit­ten by the book,” she writes in her mem­oir, Just Kids.  “I longed to read them all, and the things I read of pro­duced new yearn­ings.”

Smith found a role mod­el in Jo, the tomboy writer in Louisa May Alcot­t’s Lit­tle Women. “She gave me the courage of a new goal,” writes Smith, “and soon I was craft­ing lit­tle sto­ries and spin­ning long yarns for my broth­er and sis­ter.” As a teenag­er she dis­cov­ered the French Sym­bol­ist poets Charles Baude­laire and espe­cial­ly Arthur Rim­baud, who inspired her and helped shape her own artis­tic per­sona as a poet and punk rock­er.

Despite her fame as a rock ’n’ roll musi­cian, Smith has always described her­self as essen­tial­ly a book­ish per­son. It was around the time of Smith’s appear­ance at the 2008 Mel­bourne Inter­na­tion­al Arts Fes­ti­val, accord­ing to Ver­ti­go, that Smith released this list of her favorite books. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, it’s an eclec­tic and fas­ci­nat­ing group of books:

• The Mas­ter and Mar­gari­ta by Mikhail Bul­gakov
• Jour­ney to the East by Her­mann Hesse
• The Glass Bead Game by Her­mann Hesse
• Heart of Dark­ness by Joseph Con­rad
• Moby Dick by Her­man Melville
• Bil­ly Budd by Her­man Melville
• Songs of Inno­cence by William Blake
• The Wild Boys by William Bur­roughs
• Howl by Allen Gins­berg
• A Sea­son in Hell by Arthur Rim­baud
• Illu­mi­na­tions by Arthur Rim­baud
• Wittgen­stein’s Pok­er by David Edmonds and John Eidi­now
• Vil­lette by Char­lotte Bronte
• The Process by Brion Gysin
• Cain’s Book by Alexan­der Troc­chi
• Cori­olanus by William Shake­speare
• The Hap­py Prince by Oscar Wilde
• The Shel­ter­ing Sky by Paul Bowles
• Against Inter­pre­ta­tion by Susan Son­tag
• The Obliv­ion Seek­ers by Isabelle Eber­hardt
• The Women of Cairo by Gérard de Ner­val
• Under the Vol­cano by Mal­colm Lowry
• Dead Souls by Niko­lai Gogol
• The Book of Dis­qui­et by Fer­nan­do Pes­soa
• The Death of Vir­gil by Her­mann Broch
• Raise High the Roof Beam, Car­pen­ters by J.D. Salinger
• Fran­ny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
• The Scar­let Let­ter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• A Night of Seri­ous Drink­ing by René Dau­mal
• Swann in Love by Mar­cel Proust
• A Hap­py Death by Albert Camus
• The First Man by Albert Camus
• The Waves by Vir­ginia Woolf
• Big Sur by Jack Ker­ouac
• Any­thing by H.P. Love­craft
• Any­thing by W.G. Sebald
• The Thief’s Jour­nal or any­thing by Jean Genet
• The Arcades Project or any­thing by Wal­ter Ben­jamin
• Poet in New York by Fed­eri­co Gar­cía Lor­ca
• The Lost Hon­or of Katha­ri­na Blum by Hein­rich Böll
• The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuo­la
• Ice or any­thing by Anna Kavan
• The Divine Pro­por­tion by  H.E. Hunt­ley
• Nad­ja by André Bre­ton

Smith’s read­ing rec­om­men­da­tions have no doubt evolved since the list was giv­en. Ear­li­er this year a writer for Elle asked what books she would sug­gest. “I could rec­om­mend a mil­lion,” Smith respond­ed. “I would just say read any­thing by [Rober­to] Bolaño. Re-read all the great clas­sics. Read The Scar­let Let­ter, read Moby Dick, read [Haru­ki] Muraka­mi. But Rober­to Bolaño’s 2666 is the first mas­ter­piece of the 21st cen­tu­ry.”

You can find a num­ber of the texts list­ed above in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in April 2015.

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