#49: Read the Top 100 Novels of All Time

This item, I think, is going to take me the longest to complete by far; however I am the most excited to get it crossed off. I’ve decided that I am going to select books from this list at random – again, I’ll be sure to highlight my favorites. Once the book has been read, I’ll cross it off the list and once I’m done reading them all I am positive that I will have a lot to say about completing this monumental task. Here we go…

Task started: August 2, 2010

Task completed:

The Book List

1. The Adventures of Augie March (1953), by Saul Bellow
2. All the King's Men (1946), by Robert Penn Warren
3. American Pastoral (1997), by Philip Roth
4. An American Tragedy (1925), by Theodore Dreiser
5. Animal Farm (1946), by George Orwell
6. Appointment in Samarra (1934), by John O'Hara
7. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret (1970), by Judy Blume
8. The Assistant (1957), by Bernard Malamud
9. At Swim-Two-Birds (1938), by Flann O'Brien
10. Atonement (2002), by Ian McEwan
11. Beloved (1987), by Toni Morrison
12. The Berlin Stories (1946), by Christopher Isherwood
13. The Big Sleep (1939), by Raymond Chandler
14. The Blind Assassin (2000), by Margaret Atwood
15. Blood Meridian (1986), by Cormac McCarthy
16. Brideshead Revisited (1946), by Evelyn Waugh
17. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927), by Thornton Wilder
18. Call It Sleep (1935), by Henry Roth
19. Catch-22 (1961), by Joseph Heller
20. The Catcher in the Rye (1951), by J.D. Salinger
21. A Clockwork Orange (1963), by Anthony Burgess
22. The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), by William Styron
23. The Corrections (2001), by Jonathan Franzen
24. The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), by Thomas Pynchon
25. A Dance to the Music of Time (1951), by Anthony Powell
26. The Day of the Locust (1939), by Nathanael West
27. Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), by Willa Cather
28. A Death in the Family (1958), by James Agee
29. The Death of the Heart (1958), by Elizabeth Bowen
30. Deliverance (1970), by James Dickey
31. Dog Soldiers (1974), by Robert Stone
32. Falconer (1977), by John Cheever
33. The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), by John Fowles
34. The Golden Notebook (1962), by Doris Lessing
35. Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953), by James Baldwin
36. Gone With the Wind (1936), by Margaret Mitchell
37. The Grapes of Wrath (1939), by John Steinbeck
38. Gravity's Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pynchon
39. The Great Gatsby (1925), by F. Scott Fitzgerald
40. A Handful of Dust (1934), by Evelyn Waugh
41. The Heart is A Lonely Hunter (1940), by Carson McCullers
42. The Heart of the Matter (1948), by Graham Greene
43. Herzog (1964), by Saul Bellow
44. Housekeeping (1981), by Marilynne Robinson
45. A House for Mr. Biswas (1962), by V.S. Naipaul
46. I, Claudius (1934), by Robert Graves
47. Infinite Jest (1996), by David Foster Wallace
48. Invisible Man (1952), by Ralph Ellison
49. Light in August (1932), by William Faulkner
50. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), by C.S. Lewis
51. Lolita (1955), by Vladimir Nabokov
52. Lord of the Flies (1955), by William Golding
53. The Lord of the Rings (1954), by J.R.R. Tolkien
54. Loving (1945), by Henry Green
55. Lucky Jim (1954), by Kingsley Amis
56. The Man Who Loved Children (1940), by Christina Stead
57. Midnight's Children (1981), by Salman Rushdie
58. Money (1984), by Martin Amis
59. The Moviegoer (1961), by Walker Percy
60. Mrs. Dalloway (1925), by Virginia Woolf
61. Naked Lunch (1959), by William Burroughs
62. Native Son (1940), by Richard Wright
63. Neuromancer (1984), by William Gibson
64. Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro
65. 1984 (1948), by George Orwell
66. On the Road (1957), by Jack Kerouac
67. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), by Ken Kesey
68. The Painted Bird (1965), by Jerzy Kosinski
69. Pale Fire (1962), by Vladimir Nabokov
70. A Passage to India (1924), by E.M. Forster
71. Play It As It Lays (1970), by Joan Didion
72. Portnoy's Complaint (1969), by Philip Roth
73. Possession (1990), by A.S. Byatt
74. The Power and the Glory (1939), by Graham Greene
75. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), by Muriel Spark
76. Rabbit, Run (1960), by John Updike
77. Ragtime (1975), by E.L. Doctorow
78. The Recognitions (1955), by William Gaddis
79. Red Harvest (1929), by Dashiell Hammett
80. Revolutionary Road (1961), by Richard Yates
81. The Sheltering Sky (1949), by Paul Bowles
82. Slaughterhouse Five (1969), by Kurt Vonnegut
83. Snow Crash (1992), by Neal Stephenson
84. The Sot-Weed Factor (1960), by John Barth
85. The Sound and the Fury (1929), by William Faulkner
86. The Sportswriter (1986), by Richard Ford
87. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1964), by John le Carre
88. The Sun Also Rises (1926), by Ernest Hemingway
89. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), by Zora Neale Hurston
90. Things Fall Apart (1959), by Chinua Achebe
91. To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), by Harper Lee **Top 5 Favorite Book!!**
92. To the Lighthouse (1927), by Virginia Woolf
93. Tropic of Cancer (1934), by Henry Miller
94. Ubik (1969), by Philip K. Dick
95. Under the Net (1954), by Iris Murdoch
96. Under the Volcano (1947), by Malcolm Lowry
97. Watchmen (1986), by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
98. White Noise (1985), by Don DeLillo
99. White Teeth (2000), by Zadie Smith
100. Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), by Jean Rhys

#50: Watch AFI's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time

Here’s the deal – I love movies. Looking over this list, I’ve watched probably forty percent of them at some point in my life. Most were over 10 years ago in a little bird course in high school called “Survey of Cinema”…which was basically an opportunity to sleep during school. So…I decided that anything that I haven’t seen within the last year simply doesn’t count for this project. Since this project may take me a while to complete, I’m posting the list now and as I go through and watch each movie I’ll cross it off the list. Once I’ve watched all 100 movies, I’ll be sure to post why this item was important to me and what completing this task means. Anything that I consider to be a “must see” I will be sure to highlight. Can someone make me some popcorn and get me a giant bucket of soda? And, please turn off your cell phones and quiet your unruly children. Mmmkay, thanks.

XXOO
Mand’e

The Movie List

1. Citizen Kane (1941)

2. Casablanca (1942)

3. The Godfather (1972)

4. Gone With The Wind (1939)

5. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

6. The Wizard of Oz (1939)

7. The Graduate (1967)

8. On The Waterfront (1954)

9. Schindler’s List (1993)

10. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)

11. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

12. Sunset Boulevard (1950)

13. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

14. Some Like It Hot (1959) **Top 5 Favorite Movie!**

15. Star Wars (1977)

16. All About Eve (1950)

17. The African Queen (1951)

18. Psycho (1960)

19. Chinatown (1974)

20. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

21. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

22. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

23. The Maltese Falcon (1941)

24. Raging Bull (1980)

25. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982)

26. Dr. Strangelove (1964)

27. Bonnie & Clyde (1967)

28. Apocalypse Now (1979)

29. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

30. Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

31. Annie Hall (1977)

32. The Godfather, Part II (1974)

33. High Noon (1952)

34. To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

35. It Happened One Night (1934)

36. Midnight Cowboy (1969)

37. The Best Years Of Our Life (1946)

38. Double Indemnity (1944)

39. Doctor Zhivago (1965)

40. North By Northwest (1959)

41. West Side Story (1961)

42. Rear Window (1954)

43. King Kong (1933)

44. The Birth Of a Nation (1915)

45. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

46. A Clockwork Orange (1971)

47. Taxi Driver (1976)

48. Jaws (1975)

49. Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (1937)

50. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (1969)

51. The Philadelphia Story (1940)

52. From Here to Eternity (1953)

53. Amadeus (1984)

54. All Quiet On the Western Front (1930)

55. The Sound Of Music (1965)

56. M*A*S*H(1970)

57. The Third Man (1949)

58. Fantasia (1940)

59. Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

60. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

61. Vertigo (1958)

62. Tootsie (1982)

63. Stagecoach (1939)

64. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

65. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

66. Network (1976)

67. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

68. An American in Paris (1951)

69. Shane (1953)

70. The French Connection (1971)

71. Forrest Gump (1994)

72. Ben-Hur (1959)

73. Wuthering Heights (1939)

74. The Gold Rush (1925)

75. Dances With Wolves (1990)

76. City Lights (1931)

77. American Graffiti (1973)

78. Rocky (1976)

79. The Deer Hunter (1978)

80. The Wild Bunch (1969)

81. Modern Times (1936)

82. Giant (1956)

83. Platoon (1986)

84. Fargo (1996)

85. Duck Soup (1933)

86. Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

87. Frankenstein (1931)

88. Easy Rider (1969)

89. Patton (1970)

90. The Jazz Singer (1927)

91. My Fair Lady (1964)

92. A Place in the Sun (1951)

93. The Apartment (1960)

94. Goodfellas (1990)

95. Pulp Fiction (1994)

96. The Searchers (1956)

97. Bringing up Baby (1938)

98. Unforgiven (1992)

99. Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967)

100. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

Why have a list?

How this is going to work…

For the past 30 years I have failed to ‘live in the moment’. Looking back, I admit that I am full of regret, but the hardest part of admitting something like this is coupling it with the fact that I have no one to blame but myself. Throughout my life I have been blessed with good health. I have amazing family and friends who love and support me. I have been given plenty of opportunities to do something great with my life. I’ve simply chosen not to. No matter what the reason may be, admitting to yourself that you haven’t lived the life that you truly want is a hard pill to swallow.

Right now, I’m at a unique point in my life where I can learn from the mistakes that I made as a twenty-something and make better decisions about how I want to live my life as a thirty-something. The only thing that I need to make it happen is a second chance to do all of those things that I would have done if I simply chose to do them.

With that, I give you “The Do-Over List”. Each item has a specific reason why it’s important for me to do. As I cross the items off the list I plan on sharing why they are important for me to complete, what my experience was while completing the item, and what lesson I learned throughout the entire process.

Join me in this unique journey and remember that no matter what has happened in your life, each new day is your chance for a ‘do-over’. You just have to take advantage of the opportunities that you’re given.

XXOO

Mand’e