It's a Race!

Yesterday while scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed, I encountered a link to a list of 50 books every woman should read before she is 40 (Original Post). It's been a while since I encountered a list like that where I hadn't already missed the deadline (because I'm 32 and most of the lists I see refer to women in their 20's), so I shared it on my wall. I have already read 10 of the books on the list, so I have a pretty good start and almost 8 years to complete it, but Platypire Bob felt the need to challenge me to a race, to see which of us can complete the list first (and I'm a sucker for a challenge). I have a 2 book head start on Bob, but increasingly larger portions of my available reading time are being used for work (freelance proofreading), so I have a feeling Bob will overtake me soon (and then I'll never catch up.)

To simplify things for myself (and theoretically to help me keep track of my progress), here is the full list.

Read

Owned

Un-Owned

1) Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

2) A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

3) Ain't I a Woman by bell hooks

4) Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

5) Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

6) The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

7) Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

8) The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

9) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

10) Beloved by Toni Morrison

11) Bossypants by Tina Fey

12) Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

13) A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

14) The Color Purple by Alice Walker

15) Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

16) The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

17) Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

18) Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

19) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

20) The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

21) A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor

22) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

23) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

24) Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

25) The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

26) In the Time of Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

27) Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

28) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

29) Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

30) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

31) Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

32) The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

33) The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

34) The Liars Club by Mary Karr

35) Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro

36) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

37) A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

38) Lucky by Alice Sebold

39) On Beauty by Zadie Smith

40) Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert

41) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

42) Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women's Book Collective

43) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

44) The Second Shift by Arlie Russell Hochschild

45) A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

46) them by Joyce Carol Oates

47) The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

48) The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

49) Wild by Cheryl Strayed

50) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

So there's the list. I feel like I've got a good start with owning several of the books that I haven't already read too (so I don't have to worry about finding them at the library or having the money to buy them to get started.) If you're interested in joining Bob and me in this challenge, I have linked to all of the books on Amazon, just click their titles. - Katie