Go shorty, IT'S MAH BIRFDAY.

Let's celebrate, readers!  Today marks the end of my third decade on this glorious Earth, and the beginning of my fourth.  That's right, it's my birthday, and I'm turning the big 3-0.  HUZZAH!

I have never been one to fear "big" birthday milestones, this one included.  I'd like to think that I packed an awful lot into the last decade.  Graduated college, met/dated/married my husband, got my first (two) real jobs, earned a masters degree, hiked a bunch of mountains, traveled to over 10 different countries, ran a 15k, bought a house, got a dog, had a kid, sold the house and bought another one, and now am nearly ready to pop out another baby.  And those are just the highlights.  If anything, 30 is a celebration of all that awesomeness, plus a mark of anticipation for what's to come.  BRING YOUR A-GAME, THIRTY.

Me and Husband on my 24th birthday, 6 years ago.  So young.  So carefree.  So weird.

In honor of this most momentous of birthdays, I decided to challenge myself and compile a list: 30 books to read before I'm 35.  However, when I started making the list, I quickly realized that there were more than 30 books that I really, really want to read sometime in the next few years.  Actually, there were 53 on the original list.  I kept cutting it down, until finally I got it to 40, and decided that DAMMIT, I am 30 years old, I can break a rule here or there.

So now the list is:

30 Books To Read Before I Turn 35

(plus 10 more, because I'm 30 and I DO WHAT I WANT)

This list might seem odd to you in parts, but it's a mix of classics (which I am always trying to read when I have the time), books that have been on my TBR forever for whatever reason, and more popular recent books that I am dying to read but just never made the time for.  So, without further ado!

The World According to Garp by John Irving
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
1776 by David McCullough
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper
The Gunslinger by Stephen King
Paper Moon by Joe David Brown
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackaray
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
The Whole Fromage by Kathe Lison
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
anything by Agatha Christie (never read one!)
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Ulysses by James Joyce
Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Macbeth by Shakespeare
Columbine by Dave Cullen
Jordan Freeman Was My Friend by Richard White
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Bag of Bones by Stephen King
The Odyssey by Homer
Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
Incendiary by Chris Cleave
The Passage by Justin Cronin
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Dinner by Herman Koch
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Dracula by Bram Stoker

I will keep the blog updated with any reviews I do of these novels along the way.  Make sure you cheer me on...5 years goes by in a blink, and when I walk into a library I get easily distracted by well-made book displays.

What do you think of the list, friends?  Anything I should have added?  And what's your take on big birthday milestones: fearsome or fantastic?