Readathon: Hour 0

Here we are at Hour 0 of the Readathon. I feel a bit like a renegade because I'm starting 13 hours before the 'official' start time. You can read my rather boring and obvious reasons for doing so here.

Choosing books for the readathon has been a tricky task. On Tuesday I went through my bookshelves and removed books that fitted the following criteria. One: books were written by a 'woman'. Two: books I could contemplate finishing during the readathon. For example, Gillespie and I has been teasing me from my bookshelves. However it does weigh in at 624 pages and I already had the tome of The Tenderness of Wolves sitting on my book pile. I'm due a holiday in June so I reluctantly put Gillespie and I back on the pile. Until the summer, my friend. 

Here's a group shot of my long list (please ignore my cluttered sofa, complete with a polar bear blanket!):

Him Indoors originally thought these books were for the charity shop box. Oh dear, how misinformed was he?

It was interesting to see my tastes venture towards fiction written by women. Out of the thirty six books I chose for my long list, twenty four were fiction, four were autobiographies, seven were feminist theory and one historical analysis of London in the eighteenth century. I had planned to alternate reading fiction with non-fiction but it might not be as simple as that. I've decided to keep the long list to hand, just in case I find I'm not enjoying some of my reads. So here's my short list that I'm planning to tackle today:

Fiction:

The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing

Woman on the Edge of Time – Marge Piercy

The Tenderness of Wolves – Stef Penny

Tamburlaine Must Die – Louise Welsh

Stand by books:

The Complete Stories – Flannery O'Connor

The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd

Non-Fiction

Sexual Politics – Kate Millet

Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to why Feminism Matters – Jessica Valenti

Red Dust Road – Jackie Kay

The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet – Margaret Wertheim

Stand by books:

Cancer Vixen – Marisa Acocella Marchetto

The Equality Illusion - Kat Baynard

I am under no illusion that I will finish all books on this list by midnight tonight. However I'm going to have a good crack at it. Let the reading commence!