31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s — Essential Books

Muhiuddin Alam
ReadingAndThinking.com
12 min readMay 13, 2021
31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s — Essential Books

In this article, we will share 31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s. We have looked at life-changing books, self-development books, personal development books, Best Female Empowerment Books, Classic books every woman should read, good books for middle-aged women, books every woman should read in a lifetime of all category, and recommended 31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s from those. Choose wisely.

Books are beautiful things. Information, entertainment, wisdom, and imagination can all be contained in that beautiful stack of pages. . . Or there may be electronic materials.

But there are many books in this world. To be precise, there are thousands of books, so the question is, “What kind of books are suitable for women in their 40s?” Especially in the first half of your life, you will try to do more. Try to find everything you can get in life. In the beginning, I wanted to say that there are many books that can make up my book list, but I hope you, like me, will continue to read these books during the years of education. However, reading some classic works can be meaningful.

For ladies in their 40s, some of their relatives often like to read books. You can recommend some interesting novels to them.

When you enter your 40s, you have already had a certain experience, and your thinking is slowly maturing. You also need to keep reading some books to improve yourself. The following are the must-read books recommended by the editor for 40-year-old women, welcome to read!

This book is for The majority of middle-aged women tailor-made, tell them: how to welcome the second spring of life with a happy mood; how to show and show the charm of wisdom with careful self-design.

Women in their 40s should strive to create a good image of themselves and devote themselves to work with a positive attitude; at the same time, they should also strive to create the warmth of the family, care for the emotions between husband and wife, and build a harmonious life; with meticulous self-care, Keep in good health, take care of yourself scientifically, and pursue a healthy and happy life.

Women are very sensitive and attentive, so when it comes to reading, women are more likely to understand the truth in books, and women who love to read are very temperamental, and knowledge can also become a woman’s confidence. A classic book that a woman must-read in her life, come and see.

Some time ago, my friend asked me to recommend Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s, but I didn’t answer immediately. The reason is that there are different choices due to different genders, ages, hobbies, and orientations in reading. However, trust in bloggers cannot be fruitless. Therefore, after consulting relevant materials and editing this bibliography for women, this article can be regarded as an answer to my friend and also a recommendation 31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s to all-female who love reading.

Books Every Woman in their 40s Should Have on Her Bookshelf

Table Of Contents

  • 1. We Should All Be Feminists
  • 2. The World According to Garp
  • 3. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
  • 4. Depression Hates a Moving Target
  • 5. The Year of Magical Thinking
  • 6. The 21 Day Financial Fast
  • 7. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
  • 8. The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?
  • 9. White Teeth
  • 10. Persuasion
  • 11. It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken
  • 12. #GirlBoss
  • 13. Lean In
  • 14. Americanah
  • 15. Everything I Never Told You
  • 16. The Goldfinch
  • 17. Beloved
  • 18. Mistakes I Made at Work
  • 19. The Queen’s Code
  • 20. Teaching Kids to Buy Stocks
  • 21. How to Think Strategically
  • 22. State of Wonder
  • 23. Hannah Coulter
  • 24. The Girl With All the Gifts
  • 25. The Secret Scripture
  • 26. Family Trust
  • 27. Inheritance from Mother
  • 28. The Leisure Seeker
  • 29. The Murder at the Vicarage
  • 30. The Summer Book
  • 31. This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance!

31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s — Essential Books

1. We Should All Be Feminists

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Summary:

What does “feminism” mean today? That is the question at the heart of We Should All Be Feminists, a personal, eloquently argued essay — adapted from her much-viewed Tedx talk of the same name — by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. With humor and levity, here Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century — one rooted in inclusion and awareness.

She shines a light not only on blatant discrimination but also on the more insidious, institutional behaviors that marginalize women around the world, in order to help readers of all walks of life better understand the often masked realities of sexual politics.

Throughout, she draws extensively on her own experiences — in the US, in her native Nigeria, and abroad — offering an artfully nuanced explanation of why the gender divide is harmful to women and men, alike. Argued in the same observant, witty and clever prose that has made Adichie a bestselling novelist, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman today — and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists

2. The World According to Garp

by John Irving

31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s — Essential Books

Summary:

Famous contemporary American writer John Owen is a rich, wise and humorous work. The main axis of the story is a man named Gap. He has a celebrity mother Jenny who was born in a wealthy family. Jenny is an unmarried mother. She said: “I want a job and live alone. I want a child, but I don’t want to share my body or life with others.” So she raised Gap and grew up.

He spent a lot of energy to expand Gap’s horizons and even spent money to let him spend the night with a prostitute… In Owen’s brilliant writings, Gap’s world is an imaginary world, but the fear, happiness, and anger in this world The stories of love, complexity, and innocence, and the cycle between tragedy and comedy, illuminate real life. This book won the 1980 American National Book Award.

3. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood

by Marjane Satrapi

31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s — Essential Books

Summary:

Wise, often funny, sometimes heartbreaking, “Persepolis,” tells the story of Marjane Satrapi’s life in Tehran from the ages of six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken child of radical Marxists, and the great-granddaughter of Iran’s last emperor, Satrapi bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.

“Persepolis” paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Amidst the tragedy, Marjane’s child’s eye view adds immediacy and humor, and her story of a childhood at once outrageous and ordinary, beset by the unthinkable and yet buffered by an extraordinary and loving family, is immensely moving. It is also very beautiful; Satrapi’s drawings have the power of the very best woodcuts.

4. Depression Hates a Moving Target

by Nita Sweeney

Amazon’s synopsis:

Before she discovered running, Nita Sweeney was 49-years-old, chronically depressed, occasionally manic, and unable to jog for more than 60 seconds at a time. Using exercise, Nita discovered an inner strength she didn’t know she possessed, and with the help of her canine companion, she found herself on the way to completing her first marathon. In her memoir, Sweeney shares how she overcame emotional and physical challenges to finish the race and come back from the brink.

Anyone who has struggled with depression knows the ways the mind can defeat you. However, it is possible to transform yourself with the power of running. You may learn that you can endure more than you think and that there’s no other therapy quite like pavement beneath your feet.

5. The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

Summary:

From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year’s Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary.

In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma.

This powerful book is Didion’s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness… About marriage and children and memory… About the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.”

6. The 21 Day Financial Fast

by Michelle Singletary

Amazon’s synopsis:

In The 21-Day Financial Fast, award-winning writer and The Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary proposes a field-tested financial challenge. For twenty-one days, participants will put away their credit cards and buy only the barest essentials. With Michelle’s guidance during this three-week financial fast, you will discover how to:

  • Break bad spending habits
  • Plot a course to become debt-free with the Debt Dash Plan
  • Avoid the temptation of overspending on college
  • Learn how to prepare elderly relatives and yourself for future long-term care expenses
  • Be prepared for any contingency with a Life Happens Fund
  • Stop worrying about money and find the priceless power of financial peace

As you discover practical ways to achieve financial freedom, you’ll experience what it truly means to live a life of financial peace and prosperity.

Thousands of individuals have participated in the fast and as a result, have gotten out of debt and become better managers of their money and finances . . . and you can too!

7. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

by Malcolm Gladwell

31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s — Essential Books

Summary:

THE TIPPING POINT is the biography of an idea, and the idea is quite simple. It is that many of the problems we face-from crime to teenage delinquency to traffic jams-behave like epidemics. They aren’t linear phenomena in the sense that they steadily and predictably change according to the level of effort brought to bear against them. They are capable of sudden and dramatic changes in direction. Years of well-intentioned intervention may have no impact at all, yet the right intervention-at just the right time can start a cascade of change.

Many of the social ills that face us today, in other words, areas inherently volatile as the epidemics that periodically through the human population: little things can cause them to tip at any time and if we want to understand how to confront and solve them we have to understand what those tipping Points’ are.

In this revolutionary new study, Malcolm Gladwell explores the ramifications of this. Not simply for politicians and policy-makers, his method provides a new way of viewing everyday experience and enables us to develop strategies for everything from raising a child to running a company.

8. The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?

by Rick Warren

31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s — Essential Books

Amazon’s synopsis:

Before you were born, God already planned your life. God longs for you to discover the life he uniquely created you to live — here on earth, and forever in eternity. Let The Purpose Driven Life show you how. As one of the bestselling nonfiction books in history, with more than 35 million copies sold, The Purpose Driven Life is far more than just a book; it’s the road map for your spiritual journey. A journey that will transform your life.

Designed to be read in 42 days, each chapter provides a daily meditation and practical steps to help you discover and live out your purpose, starting with exploring three of life’s most pressing questions:

  • The Question of Existence: Why am I alive?
  • The Question of Significance: Does my life matter?
  • The Question of Purpose: What on earth am I here for?

The book also includes links to 3-minute video introductions and a 30- to 40-minute audio Bible study message for each chapter. Plus questions for further study and additional resources.

The Purpose Driven Life is available in audiobook, ebook, softcover, and hardcover editions. Also available: The Purpose Driven Life video study and study guide, journal, devotional, book for kids, book for churches, Spanish edition, Large Print edition, and more.

9. White Teeth

by Zadie Smith

Amazon’s synopsis:

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones, and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad, and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”).

Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. Set against London’s racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the former empire and into the past as it barrels toward the future, White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.

Related Reading:10 Books Every Woman Should Read In A Lifetime

10. Persuasion

by Jane Austen

31 Books Every Woman Should Read In Her 40s — Essential Books

Summary:

Jane Austen’s last completed novel, Persuasion is a delightful social satire of England’s landed gentry and a moving tale of lovers separated by class distinctions. After years apart, unmarried Anne Elliot, the heroine Jane Austen called “almost too good for me,” encounters the dashing naval officer others persuaded her to reject, as he now courts the rash and younger Louisa Musgrove. Superbly drawn, these characters and those of Anne’s prideful father, Sir Walter, the scheming Mrs.

Clay, and the duplicitous William Elliot, heir to Kellynch Hall, become luminously alive — so much so that the poet Tennyson, visiting historic Lyme Regis, where a pivotal scene occurs, exclaimed: “Don’t talk to me of the Duke of Monmouth. Show me the exact spot where Louisa Musgrove fell! “

Tender, almost grave, Persuasion offers a glimpse into Jane Austen’s own heart while it magnificently displays the full maturity of her literary power.

11. It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken

by Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt

Summary:

The latest book by Greg Behrendt, author of the multi-million plus copy bestseller’s Just Not That Into You’, is another hilarious, wry, and wise take on relationships and how to move on when one goes sour.’ He’s Just Not That Into You’ is more than a book. It’s a revolution.

The phrase, coined by Behrendt for an episode of Sex and the City’, has now entered the language: it features in ads, it’s referred to in newspaper headlines and it has spawned spin-off spoof books and more.’ It’s Called A Break-up Because It’s Broken’ promises to do this and more. It will help you get over anyone and move on.

Behrendt’s voice is unique — combining tell-it-like-it-is advice with humor and the guy’s eye view’.The book is filled with solid advice to help you let go of your ex — for example:’It’s 3 am, the bottle of wine is empty, do you really want to make that call?’ Each insightful chapter is complemented with a Q -and-A with Greg on what he’s thinking, case studies, and games. Greg and Amiira tackle tough issues such as break-up sex, how not to lose your friends during a break-up, and 10 great places to cry.

It’s the ultimate read and reference for anyone who has ever been in a relationship. and 10 great places to cry. It’s the ultimate read and reference for anyone who has ever been in a relationship. and 10 great places to cry. It’s the ultimate read and reference for anyone who has ever been in a relationship.

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