I'm a Bookworm Alright

So Ms. Rhi in Pink is having a contest. A contest to do with READING and BOOKS, which if you've ever been here before, you KNOW is right up my alley. I am totally jumping on this bookmobile and playing along. You can too! (You can read how this contest evolved here and here.)

Rhiannon’s List of Must Read Books for the Twenty or Thirty-Something Career Girl With an Active Social Life and Reality TV to Watch

• The ones I've read are in bold.
• The ones I want to read are in italics.
• The ones I have no desire to read I'm supposed to strike through.

1. The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells
2. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
3. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
4. The New Kings of Nonfiction, Ira Glass
5. Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, Danielle Ganek
6. White Teeth, Zadie Smith
7. Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris
8. Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver
9. The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
10. A Girl Named Zippy, Haven Kimmel
11. Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, Fannie Flagg
12. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters, Mark Dunn
13. Stupid and Contagious, Caprice Crane
14. Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs
15. Bitter is the New Black, Jen Lancaster
16. Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, Lois P. Frankel
17. I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies), Laurie Notaro
18. Running in Heels, Anna Maxted
19. She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb
20. Sushi for Beginners, Marian Keyes
21. Jemima J, Jane Green
22. Something Borrowed, Emily Giffin
23. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
24. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
25. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume
26. The Gift of Fear, Gavin De Becker
27. Emma, Jane Austen
28. The Hours, Michael Cunningham
29. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
30. The Romance Reader, Pearl Abraham
31. Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
32. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
33. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss
34. A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn
35. Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky
36. Swell: A Girl’s Guide to the Good Life, Ilene Rosenzweig
37. I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, Amy Sedaris
38. Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, Jennifer Baumgardner
39. The Notebook, Nicholas Sparks
40. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search…, Elizabeth Gilbert
41. Bloodsucking Fiends, Christopher Moore
42. The World According to Mimi Smartypants, Mimi Smartypants
43. The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Melissa Bank
44. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver
45. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
46. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
47. The Singing Creek where the Willows Grow, Opal Stanley Whitely
48. I Am America (And So Can You), Stephen Colbert
49. No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories, Miranda July
50. Shopgirl, Steve Martin
51. Marley and Me, John Grogan
52. The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
53. Into the Wild, John Krakauer
54. Nanny Diaries, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
55. Watermelon, Marian Keyes
56. Summer at Tiffany, Marjorie Hart
57. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
58. Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, James Patterson
59. The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
60. Remember Me? , Sophie Kinsella
61. Good in Bed, Jennifer Weiner
62. My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult
63. Everyone Worth Knowing, Lauren Weisenberger
64. A Season in Purgatory, Dominick Dunne
65. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough
66. See Jane Date, Melissa Senate
67. Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld
68. Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott
69. Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
70. He’s Just Not That Into You, Greg Behrendt
71. I Was Told There’d Be Cake, Sloane Crosley
72. The Department of Lost & Found, Alison Winn Scotch
73. Straight Up and Dirty, Stephanie Klein
74. The Curious Incident of the Dog in Nighttime, Mark Haddon
75. Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

Hmmm, I've only read 14 of the 75. To be honest, there's quite a few I've never heard of but that won't stop me from adding them to my Books To Read list! Because honestly, I've rarely met a book I didn't like, or at least finish. Except one. In the last decade or more, the only book I couldn't bear to finish was Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. My sister loved it, but I just couldn't read another page and finally put it away. Granted, it was a long time ago and if I picked it up now I might feel differently but let's be honest. My To Read list is as long as my arm and there's not much chance of a previously abhorred book jumping to the top of the queue.

Let me tell you about my Books To Read list(s) and give you one more reason to question my sanity. There's actually not just one list. There's a collection of scraps and post-it notes with various Books To Read on my bulletin board. My paperbackswap.com account has a wish list. My library's website has a wish list. My purse and wallet have authors and titles of Books To Read. I have lists for specific authors with Books to Read. It's a sickness really.

See, I used to buy books quite often. I hardly ever visited the library. Of course this was Pre-Children when we had two full-time incomes, yet somehow thought we were always broke. Maybe I was buying too many books. Hmmm. It's an interesting thought. But nowadays I limit my book-buying to authors I know and whose books I know I will read again, and be proud to loan to friends. Instead, now everywhere I go, if I come across books that look interesting to me I just jot down the name and author to add to my ever-growing Books To Read list. Seriously, if I read only the books on my various lists, at the rate of one a week, I wouldn't need another book recommendation for approximately 3 years. And don't even get me started on the books I want to RE-read!

Anyway, we were talking about Rhi's contest! Go to her site, post which book is your favorite on the list and you're automatically entered in her drawing. If you do your own review of the list of books on your blog, you get another entry! Cool, huh? Oh, and don't forget to tell ME which is your favorite book on the list. And while you're at it, throw another book recommendation at me. I'm always up for another good book! And you can bet I'll be taking notes...