With the death of one of pop culture's most iconic and ever-transforming personalities here's a selection from the Thin White Duke's list of 100 titles that have formed his thinking, released in 2013 as part of a massive exhibition about the artist. Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse (1959)Waterhouse's seminal novel about a working class teenager living with his parents in Yorkshire who spends his time fantasising of life in the big city must have had a strong influence on the young David Jones growing up in South London. It would be another 10 years before David Jones became David Bowie and shot to fame with the release of Space Oddity and his reinvention as Ziggy Stardust, lead singer of the Spiders from Mars.Black Boy by Richard Wright (1945)Bowie probably read this later in his career, during his mid-70s sojourn in the US while recording his chart-topping crossover album Young Americans. Wright's memoir of his early life and the challenges of being black in pre-Civil Rights era America remains one of the most perceptive examinations of an overlooked underbelly of the American dream.The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima (1963)Mishima's focus on themes of sexuality and death might have appealed to Bowie's ideas about his own sexuality. The grand theatrics of Mishima's own life and his ritual suicide in protest at the end of Japan's monarchy have resonance with Bowie's onstage killing of his Ziggy Stardust persona in 1973.Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin (1929)Döblin's Weimar Republic tale of small-time criminal Franz Bieberkopf is considered by many the Ulysses of German Modernism. Its 1980 10-hour miniseries adaptation by maverick film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder brought the tale to a new generation and shed light on the history of Berlin, a city that reinvigorated Bowie during the recording of his Brian Eno-produced trilogy of albums (Low, Heroes, The Lodger) in the city from 1977-1980.Mystery Train by Greil Marcus (1975)This book by rock music's foremost cultural theorist is a benchmark of writing about rock music and 40 years after its publication continues to change the way we think about rock 'n' roll and its undeniable influence on the shape of many spheres of popular culture.The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens (2001)Once he overcame his cocaine addiction, which had led him to make several strange political pronouncements in the 1970s and 1980s, Bowie settled into the liberal-minded politics of many pop stars of his generation. Hitchens's scathing attack on the former US secretary of state, which calls for Kissinger's prosecution for war crimes, must have struck a chord with the middle-aged Bowie whose reading list includes a number of works on the history of the 20th century.Teenage: The Creation of Youth 1875-1945 by Jon Savage (2007)It's easy to see why Bowie would be interested in a book by one of Britain's foremost pop culture observers about the creation of a group on which the pop star's success would rest for much of his early career. Savage's wide ranging and thoroughly researched book takes a hard look at the young rebels of the early modern age and shows that their existence stretches further back than most commentators imagined.The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)Dominican author Diaz's Pulitzer prize-winning novel is a gloriously funny and often tragic account of an overweight, comics-obsessed boy's life in America. It's full of the kind of pop culture and historical references that shaped much of Bowie's approach to his song-writing and performance. ..