Which books do musicians love to read?

6 Music's Paperback Writers gives intriguing insights into the music that inspired the authors of some modern classics.

But art flows both ways, so what about the literature that inspires music?

From books that are responsible for entire careers to the iconic rocker who can't see any point in reading fiction, we look at the reading habits of a selection of 6 Music favourites.

Never one to do things by halves, the much-missed David Bowie revealed not one but 100 favourite books for a 2013 exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

You can find his choices at Davidbowie.com, which include iconic works from the likes of TS Elliot, George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, Tom Stoppard and Truman Capote.

One Australian journalist tried to read all 100 of them. Spoiler: He failed.

Ryan Adams chooses Mark Baker's harrowing collection of real-life tales from the Vietnam war, Nam, as his favourite book.

"It’s first-person interviews giving different perspectives on signing up to go to the Vietnam war, then actual anecdotes from the war itself. It’s brutal," he told NME in 2015.

And Ryan wasn't the only person in the music world to have felt the impact of Mark Baker's work.

"The band Fugazi got their name from this book," he added.

Adams, meanwhile, has published two books of his own; Infinity Blues (a collection of free-form poetry) and Hello Sunshine (poems and short stories).

Noel Gallagher hates fiction and we mean 'really' hates fiction. He says he's tried reading novels but can never experience any joy from them.

"I only read factual books," he told GQ magazine in 2013.

"I mean, novels are just a waste of time. I can't suspend belief in reality. I just end up thinking, 'This isn't true'."

However, he is a keen reader of non-fiction, saying he likes to read "about things that have actually happened" and says that books like The Kennedy Tapes by Ernest R May, about the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, are the type of book he can "get into."

Laura Marling is a lover of the classics and she named Jane Austen and The Bronte Sisters as her favourite authors when she was asked about her reading habits by The Guardian in 2008.

But Laura didn't fall for the apparent romance of their work, oh no.

"They're always made out to be so sweetly romantic, but they're not - they're brutal," she said.

"I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that."

She also revealed she was a big fan of Russell Brand's autobiography, My Booky Wook.

Laura turned 6 Music presenter earlier in 2017 playing a selection of her favourite tunes.

Carl Barât's favourite book reflects his roots with The Libertines, choosing The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand as his favourite read.

The book is described as the story of a "visionary artist struggling against the dull, conformist dogma of his peers."

"It’s about two architects, one who’s obsessed with this dream and one who wants to be an artist," he told NME in 2015, "It’s amazing."

As well as her work as a musician and actress, Janelle Monae also runs her own record label and uses literature to help her employees produce the best results for Wondaland Records.

All the staff at the label read Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland together.

"We knew that if we were going to be releasing five artists, including myself, we'd need to figure out a way to make sure we were on schedule," she told Billboard magazine in 2015.

"We wanted to find the quickest ways to get quality results we were all happy with. It solves problem on how we write music and how we run the company."

The Charlatans' frontman put pen to paper himself when he wrote his autobiography, Telling Stories, which was published in 2012.

In it, he spoke openly about his own experiences with class-A drugs in the band's heyday, and his favourite book is one of the most famous tales of addiction in literature, William Burroughs' Junkie.

"A classic – it’s about Burroughs’ life as a heroin addict," he told the NME in 2015 when speaking about what he'd been reading on the road. "I’ve not read it in a long time, but I wanted to get in touch with it again."

It's no surprise that Björk's favourite books aren't especially mainstream and she claims never to read the same book twice - apart from the diaries of Anais Nin. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin later settled in the USA, where she become an established author, most famous for her journals which span more than 60 years.

She also names Leonora Carrington's fantasy novel The Hearing Trumpet as a huge inspiration on her career.

"This book is so inspiring! You English should be proud of her. The book seems destined to be a movie," she told The Guardian in 2012.

"Free-flowing, spiky imagination. I love its freedom, its humour and how it invents its own laws."

Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, is one of the smartest thinkers in music, and says his favourite books focus on Asperger's syndrome, due to his respect for how the minds of sufferers work.

He names two books on the subject as his literary picks.

"I have an obsession with books about kids with Asperger’s syndrome. I like the way they think — it suits me," he told GQ magazine in 2012.

"The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is great. That and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close - they’re on a separate bookshelf.

"They don’t understand what the other books are saying by their facial expressions, but they’re perfectly lined-up."

The Catfish & The Bottlemen frontman's favourite book is Mike Skinner's autobiography, The Story Of The Streets. He revealed his favourite passage from the book to the NME in 2015:

"He tells of riding a BMX into a London estate agents in a Lacoste tracky.

"They go to kick him out until he tells them he has a 100-grand-a-month budget."

"Libraries gave us power" is the opening lyric to one of Manic Street Preachers' best known songs, A Design for Life, so it's no surprise the band appreciate the importance of literature.

Nicky Wire is such an authority on his favourite book, that recent editions of Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus have included a forward by the Manics' bassist.

He says the book was crucial to the band in their early days and told The Guardian in 2015 it "persuaded us that we could attempt to create art that just might deeply resonate with people in the way that the book had resonated with us."

"Without resorting to cliche, Lipstick Traces is the band's Holy Bible; our cultural equivalent of the Good Book," he says.

"The Manic Street Preachers have taken so much from it; we even stole the title for a compilation album."

"My hardback copy has a Biro inscription in it: 'To Nick love Richey, James and Sean, 28th September 1990.'"