Friday, April 29, 2016

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

2) A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
3) Ain't I a Woman by bell hooks
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
22) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
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 

No comments:

Post a Comment