50 books to read before I have kids

Two things have inspired this list. First of all is the book club me and some friends have recently started. We’ve only had one meeting…and I think we talked about the book for about 5 minutes…but its still my favorite new activity. Even if we aren’t really discussing the book, it is motivating me to read more. Plus the girls in the club are awesome and I’ll take any excuse to hang out with them. My second motivation came from a book I found in the library called “1,001 Books to Read Before You Die.” I do not do well with long term goals like that, so I decided to shorten it to 50 books I want to read before I have kids. If everything goes according to plan, we’ll start a family in about 5 years which means i have to read 10 book a year, which seems pretty doable. My friend Corri thinks I’ll read more than that, but I think I like facebook and Glee too much to read more than 10 a year. But we’ll see. And now, without further ado, the list. Feel free to submit ideas for my next list “100 books to read before I turn 40.”

1. East of Eden by Steinbeck
2. Cannery Row by Steinbeck
3. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
4. The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolfe
5. The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
6. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
7. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolfe
8. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
9. Sherlock Holmes by Sir Aurthur Conan Doyle
10. The Maltese Falcon by Dashielle Hammett
11. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
12. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Getrude Stein
13. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. Gone with teh Wind by Margaret Mitchell
15. The Thinking Reed by Rebecca West
16. Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck
17. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
18. Miss Petigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
19. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
20. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
21. Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
22. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
23. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
24. The Graduate by Charles Webb
25. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Break Time. You’re probably sick of reading this giant list right now, so I’ll take a break to let you know how I decided which books to put on the list. I used the book “1,001 Books to Read Before You Die” as a guideline. The author was the main factor in deciding if a book made it on the list. Authors I knew I liked, like Steinbeck, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Agatha Christie got at least one book put on the list. Then there were books that were pretty common to read in high school or college that I, for some reason, did not read. Catcher in the Rye and Cry, the Beloved Country were two such books. If there was a title that had been made into a movie and I had either seen the movie or had wanted to see the movie, I added that title. Then I veered away from the book and looked on my bookshelf and discovered some books that I had started but never finished. Bam, on the List.   And lastly I asked for some suggestions from my lovely book club ladies. So ya, that was my process. Now on to the next 25.

1. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
2. I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
3. Ragtime by E.L. Doctrow
4. The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. The Cider House Rules by John Irving
7. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. Like Wather for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
9. The Virgin Suicides by Jefferey Eugenides
10. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
11. Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
12. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
13. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens
14. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
15. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
16. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
17. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
18. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
19. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
20. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
21. Saturday by Ian McEwan
22. God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew
23. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
24. Journal of a Novel by Steinbeck
25. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

I didn’t list the books in the order I will read them. I really have no idea in what order I will read them…I’ll just see how I feel after each book. And the list will probably change a bit. I might tweak it to fit what we are reading in the club or I’ll take a book off if I start to read it and really really really don’t like it (just not liking it won’t be a enough…i have really really really not like it in order to take it off the list and not finish). So there you have it, my literary aspirations. If anyone wants to join me on this reading journey, let me know. I’d love to discuss with you!