Here we go!

Here we are! Welcome! We made it!

I'm on the fast track to the big 3-0. 29 is coming around the corner. I don't think there will be six white horses. 

At this moment, my 29th year is TBD. Almost everything about it. I'm leaving my job June 1. My current housing situation ends in August with no chance to renew. I've decided to move to Charleston, SC to be in the same city as my boyfriend. We've always been long distance. 

The summer after I graduated college I went to a wedding. The couple was the first of my friends to get married. The maid of honor, also a very recent college grad had a break down on the dance floor. The booze was flowing. Her bobby pins might have been causing some neurological distress. But there she is, in her tastefully hot pink dress screaming and crying. On the dance floor. At the reception. I don't think it was even dark out yet. Her message: EVERYTHING IS CHANGING. 

7 years later. She's still right. Everything is changing. 

In my 20s, everything has changed with great fits and some small starts and a lot of tears. The big changes have been BIG. Cross country move (and back again). Abusive relationship. The first great break up. Being a single dog parent. Graduate school. Depression several times over. Finding the person that makes you realize what relationships are supposed to be like. The small changes are the ones that sneak by and catch you up in a "when I was your age..." moment. I walk uphill both ways to work for what its worth. My city has a lot of hills. 

Things have turned out ok, as they often do. They have turned out like they are supposed to, whether you want them to or not. 

So I'm curious about these lists - books you should read in your twenties! books every twenty-something should read! I haven't read most of them. Whoopsies! 

So now, with about a year to go, I'm challenging myself. I'm going to read all the books! Not really. I'm going to read approximately 100 books. My inspiration is the Twenty-something Bible known as Buzzfeed.

The 65 Books You Need to Read in Your 20s 
The Emperor's Children - Claire Messaud
What She Saw... - Lucinda Rosenfeld
The Deptford Trilogies - Robertson Davies
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
A Visit from the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
Lucy - Jamaica Kincaid
The Moviegoer - Walter Percy
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
The Amazing Adventutes of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
Call Me Your Name - Andre Aciman
The Rachel Papers - Martin Amis
Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Never Let Me Go - Kazou Ishiguro
A Home at the End of the World - Michael Cunningham
The Sandman Series - Neil Gaiman
The Group  - Mary McCarthy
Quicksand - Nella Larsen
Passing - Nella Larsen
Pastoralia - George Saunders
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Generation X - Douglas Copeland
The Fortress of Solitude - Jonathan Lethem
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
I Love Dick - Chris Kraus
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues - Tom Robbins
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
Bossypants - Tina Fey
Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People - Toby Young
The Dirt - Motley Crue and Neil Strauss
Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis
Just Kids - Patti Smith
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City - Nick Flynn
Oh the Glory of it All - Sean Wilsey
I Don't Care About Your Band - Julie Klausner
Wild - Cheryl Strayed
Lit - Mary Karr
I'm with the Band - Pamela Des Barres
Dear Diary - Leslie Arfin
The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton - Anne Sexton
Actual Air - David Berman
The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch - Kenneth Koch
Alien vs. Predator - Michael Robbins
The Collected Poems of Audre Lord - Audre Lord
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
How to Be a Woman - Caitlin Moran
My Misspent Youth - Meghan Daum
Slouching Towards Bethlehem - Joan Didion
Up in the Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell
How to Cook Everything - Mark Bittman
How's Your Drink - Eric Felten
The Elements of Style - Strunk & White
Letters to a Young Contrarian - Christopher Hitchens
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards
He's Just Not That Into You - Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo

35 Books You Need to Read in Your Twenties (Buzzfeed Community Article)
Wild - Cheryl Strayed*
Yes Please - Amy Poehler
On The Road - Jack Kerouac*
My Year with Eleanor - Noelle Hancock
The Answer to the Riddle is Me - David Stuart MacLean
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The Opposite of Loneliness - Marina Keegan
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho
The Secret History - Donna Tartt*
The Art of Asking - Amanda Palmer
The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides
Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Not That Kind of Girl - Lena Dunham
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman*
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
The Myths of Happiness - Sonja Lyubomirsky
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
The Defining Decade - Meg Jay
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin*
Hyperbole and a Half - Allie Brosh
Exit Here - Jason Myers
Half Broke Horses - Jeanette Walls
A Single Man - Christopher Isherwood
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Native Son - Richard Wright
Demian - Herman Hesse
The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Paolo Giordano
The Fall - Albert Camus
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) - Mindy Kaling


*About those duplicates...only going to read them once. Instead I will sub in my own "must reads" to round out the group. They will be chosen randomly when I need to get crazy and stray from the plan.

And so it begins...