It’s almost the end of the year and I am going to throw in the towel on two challenges. Back on the bookshelves go Don Quixote and the rest of the books I was reading for the Armchair Travel Challenge. Oh this is sad.

I really enjoyed Don Quixote until I got towards the end of the first part – I actually did finish the first part of Don Quixote but it was a struggle to get through it. This is actually my second attempt and at least I made it through the first part so perhaps on my third attempt I’ll finish it all!

Anyway a big thanks go to Dorothy W. who organized the Tilting at Windmills blog. It was great fun to read the posts. Also big thanks go to Lesley who hosted the Armchair Travel Challenge.

Of course now what do I do but join more challenges. I participated in nine challenges this year and only completed two so you would think that with that track record I wouldn’t join others but to me these are fun. I enjoy “meeting” other bookworms, the excitement generated over books, and as I always read books from my shelves (Graphics Challenge aside) this is a great way to remember those shelf-sitters and work through my stacks. So without further ado, here are the two other challenges I’m joining:

Becky’s 19th Century Women Writers Challenge. This year I only read one classic so hopefully with this challenge I’ll make a bit more effort and read some books I’ve been wanting to read for a long time. Here are my six choices:

• Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• The Awakening by Kate Chopin
• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
• Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• Elizabeth & Her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Joy’s First in a Series Challenge. I’m a big fan of mysteries, and as I always start with the first one in the series this challenge should be a snap (I hope so at least!). Here are my 12 choices:

• A Thousand Bones by P.J. Parrish
• A Corpse in the Koryo by James Church
• The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri
• Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong
• The Blind Man of Seville by Robert Wilson
• What Angels Fear by C.S. Harris
• This Dame for Hire by Sandra Scoppettone
• Dead Witch Walking by Kim Harrison
• The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly
• Quieter Than Sleep by Joanne Dobson
• Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten
• A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George

Some of the choices may overlap with other challenges or book groups and I may switch out a title here or there but that’s it for now. And, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed that no new tempting challenges come up (like that’s going to happen – hee).

I snagged this from Ted. It is a list of the 100 most influential books written by women. I love book lists so I wanted to see how I well I did with this one. I’ve read a lot of these authors but not necessarily the books listed so only 26 from the list. Oh well, at least there are some good suggestions on here to keep in mind.

The bold ones are the ones I’ve read. And, I’ll add one at the end which I think should definitely be on this list. What do you think? Which ones would you have added?

1. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
2. Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire
3. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
4. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
5. Virginia Woolf, The Waves
6. Virginia Woolf, Orlando
7. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
8. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
9. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
10. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
11. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
12. Nadine Gordimer, Burger’s Daughter
13. Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Dollmaker
14. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
15. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
16. Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
17. Erica Jong, Fanny
18. Joy Kogawa, Obasan
19. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
20. Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child
21. Doris Lessing, The Grass Is Singing
22. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
23. Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
24. Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres
25. Lore Segal, Her First American
26. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
27. Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland
28. Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
29. Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
30. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
31. Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
32. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
33. Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, Anya
34. Cynthia Ozick, Trust
35. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
36. Amy Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife
37. Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter
38. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
39. Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer
40. Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays
41. Mary McCarthy, The Group
42. Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
43. Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man
44. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
45. Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
46. Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
47. Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
48. Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here
49. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
50. Toni Morrison, Beloved
51. Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
52. Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr. Fortune’s Maggot
53. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
54. Laura Riding, Progress of Stories
55. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
56. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower
57. Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
58. A.S. Byatt, Possession
59. Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
60. Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle
61. Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
62. Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
63. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
64. Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
65. Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
66. Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
67. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
68. Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
69. Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist
70. Nancy Willard, Things Invisible to See
71. Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
72. Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Disturbances in the Field
73. Rosellen Brown, Civil Wars
74. Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
75. Harriet Doerr, The Mountain Lion
76. Stevie Smith. Novel on Yellow Paper
77. E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
78. Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem
79. P.D. James, The Children of Men
80. Ursula Hegi, Stones From the River
81. Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
82. Katherine Mansfield, Collected Stories
83. Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills
84. Louise Erdrich, The Beet Queen
85. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
86. Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy
87. Margaret Drabble, Realms of Gold
88. Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall
89. Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King
90. Marilyn French, The Women’s Room
91. Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter
92. Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
93. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John
94. Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle
95. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
96. Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
97. Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
98. Alice Hoffman, The Drowning Season
99. Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
100. Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater
101. Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros** (my addition)