Greil Marcus' Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Greil Marcus recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Greil Marcus' favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

Chronicles: Volume One

Bob Dylan

4.2

"I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else." So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career.

Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dy

Recommended by Bill Gurley and Greil Marcus.

Greil Marcus

Dylan has had a career of extraordinary richness and variety. Yet here he is writing a memoir that completely ignores everything which made him a world figure. It ignores all of his most famous songs, it ignores all the periods in which he was a great star. It’s all about times when he was trying to learn, when he was confused and lost but absolutely alive with the thrill of discovering new ideas, new singers, new information. [source]

Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and the Doors

John Densmore

4.1

Here is the book that Rolling Stone called "the first Doors biography that feels like it was written for the right reasons, and it is easily the most informed account of the Doors' brief but brilliant life as a group".

Recommended by Greil Marcus.

Greil Marcus

John Densmore was a drummer for The Doors, a band from Los Angeles of enormous depth and popularity in the late sixties. Their music has never been off the radio in 40 years. You may hear more Doors on the radio today than 20 or even 40 years ago. The staying power of their music is quite remarkable. [source]

Bye Bye Baby: My Tragic Love Affair with The Bay City Rollers

Caroline Sullivan

4.0

Funny, poignant, and totally original--this story of one girl's love affair with the Bay City Rollers is a brilliant portrait of an era.

'I loved them desperately. For four years I lived for them. It's not a pretty story.'

Bye, Bye Baby is the true tale of a passionate obsession with possibly the most untalented bunch of musicians in the history of rock and roll. Even in their heyday, Leslie, Eric,

Recommended by Greil Marcus.

Greil Marcus

Caroline Sullivan is an American woman who became a completely obsessive fan of the Bay City Rollers, a Scottish group that dressed in all tartan costumes in the early to mid-seventies and were momentarily huge…is a hilarious and entertaining book about crazy fandom. It’s completely gripping and what it comes down to is: Will she ever sleep with one of them? [source]

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You Don't Love Me Yet (Vintage Contemporaries)

Jonathan Lethem

2.9

Bestselling author Jonathan Lethem delivers a hilarious novel about love, art, and what it's like to be young in Los Angeles. Lucinda Hoekke's daytime gig as a telephone operator at the Complaint Line—an art gallery's high-minded installation piece—is about as exciting as listening to dead air. Her real passion is playing bass in her forever struggling, forever unnamed band. But recently a frequen

Recommended by Greil Marcus.

Greil Marcus

This is a short novel that Jonathan Lethem published a few years ago about a bunch of young people who form a band in Los Angeles. They’re writing songs and trying to rehearse. In the course of the book, before the band breaks up, they play maybe three times – once at a radio show, once at a party and one other time. That’s their whole performing career. [source]

Pulphead

John Jeremiah Sullivan

4.1

In Pulphead, John Jeremiah Sullivan takes us on an exhilarating tour of our popular, unpopular, and at times completely forgotten culture. Simultaneously channeling the gonzo energy of Hunter S. Thompson and the wit and insight of Joan Didion, Sullivan shows us—with a laidback, erudite Southern charm that’s all his own—how we really (no, really) live now.

In his native Kentucky, Sullivan introduce

Recommended by Greil Marcus.

Greil Marcus

This is a new book by a writer in his mid-thirties, about all kinds of things. A lot of it is about the South, some of it is autobiographical, there is a long and quite wonderful piece about going to a Christian music camp. [source]