A Reading Vocation

I finished The Feminine Mistake last night and still need some time to chew over some more thoughts on it, but I'm also excited because now that I'm done, I can move on to my Year in Reading Suggestions challenge book:

In January, read a book published the same year you were born.
What was the world like the year you were born? Get in a time capsule and read a book that reflects the culture, views, and lifestyle of the era of your birth. Tip: Google search for best seller list [year].

I'm going to read Ruth: A Novel by Lois T. Henderson. It's a retelling of the Biblical story of Ruth, and I must've picked it up at some library book sale because I have a major weakness for retellings. When I did a search through my LibraryThing collection, this was the most interesting book I had that was published in 1981. As an added bonus, it's from my "retelling" shelf, which is where I would have chosen my next book from under my "old" system (which was to read one book from each of my bookshelves, in order.)

Although it adheres to the "letter" of the challenge, I feel that it's somewhat out of sync with the "spirit," since it's a historical novel and probably won't speak directly to what the world was like in 1981. But that doesn't really bother me -- it's still a book I wouldn't have chosen to read next without this challenge, and I think that's what it's really about.