Weekend was good thanks to getting to talk on the phone with Rhonda and Austin, but I have to say the highlight of my weekend was having Rhiannon (SJC '04) call me out of the blue Sunday night... she had missed me when I didn't come to the annual SJC vs. USNA croquet match... I was really surprised that she thought of me! Totally made my day. The good news is that SJC dominated the match, winning all 5 games plus the 2 exhibition games, AND I hope to be trekking up to Annapolis for graduation in about 3 weeks...
I also learned this weekend that the word nullpunkt is the German word for "absolute zero." Pastor Sartelle was teaching on Ezekiel 37 when dry bones are brought to life, and how the scenario before they come alive is one of despair - the nullpunkt of hope. I've been feeling that way lately, like I'm looking out over a field of dry bones in my life and thinking, there is no way these are coming alive...
But I think God might surprise me, as He usually does. I just keep staring and falling more into despair in the meantime though...
Lauren and I have talked about wanting to read the top 100 novels from the Modern Library Association, and watch the top 100 movies from the American Film Institute. I figure, they may not be the best in my estimation, but it's worth giving them a read or a viewing at least. This past weekend, we watched All About Eve, a film from 1950 about life in the theater in NYC. Very well done film, with enough twists to make it really interesting. We were going to watch another top 100 flick, Sunset Boulevard, but then my VCR broke. Go figure.
(Incase you're curious, I've watched 27 of the top movies and only read 17 of the top novels... sad, I know... Even if I were to watch 2 movies a week, I wouldn't watch the remaining 73 before August... and the books? I was thinking it would be a 5-10 year project, but, well, it appears it will be a bit longer than that at this rate.)
This is a bit more ambitious - the top 100 books of all time...
Is it just me or does anyone else undertake grossly ambitious projects like this?? Anyone else know of some good "top 100" or related lists?? Anyone have their favorites from the lists... or their least favorites??
by love.
Monday, April 24, 2006
top 100s
Posted by Kristi at 10:18 AM
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7 comments:
My ambitious project is to read all three of Kant's critiques. It's not 100 books, I know, but it's ambitious enough for me.
Apparently I've read 28 of the top 100 books of all time. If I had finished reading The Tale of Gengi, Moby Dick, Ulysses, the complete tales of Edgar Allen Poe or the collected fictions of Borges it would have been 33.
Interestingly, there were only about 10 books on the list that I hadn't read and that I recognized at all.
31 for me.
I also did the precept for Moby-Dick... otherwise I might not have finished it.
(I forgot to count off the list of all time books. There were a few I didn't even recognize either.)
Forty-three of the films, but only 11 of the books from the Modern Library list. But, seriously, c'mon, Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist, and Finnegan's Wake. Life's too short for that much Joyce ... But I've been trying to make my way through the Guardian's 100 greatest novels, and I counted 30 of the books on that list I've read, although some were so long ago, I barely remember. And I'm not looking forward to reading all seven volumes of Proust's In Search of Lost Time ...
Let' see... I really stink at this. 22 movies, 11 books, and 12 of the all-time list.
Other fun things to do - go to http://www.imdb.com/ and search by keyword and try to watch all the movies that match (I'm wanting to work on "heist" movies).
You could try listening to the top 100 movie songs of all time: http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/songs.aspx
You could borrow my book of Britain's Favorite 100 poems: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0563387823/202-3687313-0102229
Or read about the top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of all time: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/
The Google search for "Top 100" goes a long way and will take you to all sorts of interesting sites.
i really need to get out of my trailer park and hit the library...
60 movies
8 novels
15 books
but i did read 1984 3 times and crime and punishment twice so does that get points?
what about top 100 paintings? or pieces of music? such a list?
11 on the novels, 16 on the books.
One that I really liked from the list of novels was Brave New World. There were a lot on the novels list that I had picked up and attempted to read just because they were known as Works of Great Literature (Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, for instance), and I'd never really finished them, probably owing to some degree to my reading them just to say at the end of the book that I'd read them. Not so with Brave New World. I was actually interested in it--it had an engaging plot and compelling characters, a disquieting vision of the future in which the means of social control were nuanced, subtle, and not strictly political/military (for instance, Soma, the breeding programs, propaganda that wasn't imposed by the government so much as integrated into the culture, and the absurd mystical meaningless "religious services" with that gibberish about the eternal being descending on the stairs or whatever), and cool elements like the ubiquitous helicopters. I read it because I started reading it and liked it, and because I genuinely believed in considering the questions it raised. I believed it had relevance for the world we live in, and that the world it presents could open people's eyes up to the ways that the social order of their own world influenced who they were, with their own tacit consent. And there's nuances to that--some of it's good influence, and some of it's bad. But the important thing about BNW is that it opens up the questions.
that's my two cents. well, probably more like seventeen.
Hey, Kristi, what do you think of The Master and Margarita so far? Noticed you were reading it. I read Bulgakov's Heart of a Dog last year and enjoyed it, and M&M is on my list of must-read books. I've heard that the latter is even better, curious how that's going for you.
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