101 Things in 1001 Days

What a neat museum!

Today my boyfriend and I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It's a really interesting place. It's extremely different from most modern museums--I hadn't known that Gardner had requested that things stay exactly as she put them. And they have, for almost 100 years. This makes the museum much more personal than many. For the most part, the pieces aren't arranged by place or time of creation, but rather in a manner designed to help visitors use their imaginations. This, combined with the infrequency of those informative little plaques that accompany all the works in most museums, was somewhat disconcerting at first. I think it was useful for me, though. A good challenge. In most museums, I tend to read virtually all of the information given, and sometimes spend more time reading the captions than actually looking at the art. (I'm a very word-oriented person, in case you haven't figured that out.) So not having that option at this museum was good for me.

Oh, and the courtyard is just magnificent. If you are ever in Boston, go. Just the courtyard alone is worth it.

Yay!!! I can cross something off!

Hooray! My first finish! I have set up a filing system. I put together the cardboard file box I've had sitting around for months, and labeled eight or nine folders for it. It's making a big difference already... I was able to go through a bunch of papers really quickly, and get them OFF my kitchen table. I'm definitely feeling more in control. Yay!

Yay Deep Space 9!

Between last night and this morning, my boyfriend and I watched the first DVD of season three. I had forgotten how good it was. I especially liked "Equilibrium," which was the last episode we watched. And thanks to Netflix, I can send this disc back tomorrow and get the next by Thursday. Exciting. Another item underway!

AFI's 100 Movies Master List

My progress on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies original 1998 list.

Number left as of beginning challenge: 88

Number left as of last update (1/15/05): 88

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)
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 Falco (1941)
24. Raging Bull (1980)
25. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
26. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
27. Bonnie and 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 Lives (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 Kon (1943)
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 and 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)

Now I can say I've started this one.

Remember how I said the hair-growing thing would be harder than it sounded? Well, I now feel comfortable putting this item as "in progress," because it has gotten hard. Today I started getting pangs of the "must drastically change appearance!" type. When that happens, I usually get my hair cut, since that's relatively painless. (Or at least more painless than, say, getting a tattoo.) But. I will not. I will be strong. I can do this.

Thread crochet is fun!

Note: I'm going to start blogging each day about what I did the day before, in hopes of blogging earlier and getting to bed earlier. So this is a sort of extra bonus transition post.

I really shouldn't have started a doily. I know this. Before this project, the only crocheting with a pattern I'd every done was a dishcloth with a big hook and worsted weight yarn. Jumping right to thread and a 1.6mm hook was a bit shocking. But boy is it fun! I'm progressing slowly, but I like it much better than other "regular" crochet. I've even managed to teach myself a new stitch!

Lace Knitting

Several months ago, I had started this shawl with some burgundy laceweight yarn I got in Italy. I got about 30 rows in, but stopped for some reason. Yesterday I picked it back up to work on for item four. I did two rows yesterday and two today. At that rate, I know, it will take quite a while to finish. The reason this goes so slowly is that it requires almost total concentration. I tend to knit while watching TV, reading blogs, etc., but I can't really do that with this project. I think that once I get into it, I'll love it, but for now I think I need to schedule some times. I have tomorrow evening free-ish, so I think I'm going to plan to work on it for a solid hour and see how far I get.

First up: The Age of Innocence

I've decided to start working on the 100 Best Novels. I've already read 15 of them, so I have 85 to go. I'm going to start with Wharton's The Age of Innocence. I had considered going from the top down, but I think I'll be more successful if I let myself read them in whatever order I feel like. This will probably mean that I'll end up with a few I've been putting off at the end (Joyce and Faulkner, anyone?), but I think at that point my momentum will push me to finish.

I liked The House of Mirth, so I'm looking forward to The Age of Innocence. Here we go!

20th Century Novels Master List

My progress on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the Twentieth Century.

Number left as of beginning of challenge: 85

Number left as of last update (1/10/05): 85

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

Starting tomorrow!

I heard about this idea yesterday from Rachel, and immediately liked the idea. I love lists. And challenges. And self-improvement schemes. So. Needless to say, I'm in.

Constructing the list took much longer than I'd expected. And then I actually ended up with 102 and had to take one off. (I had misnumbered.) You can read my list down the left side, of course; it's more or less organized into loose categories. I have a feeling I'm in way over my head with some of them. (No, we do not want to count up how many pages I have pledged to read.) But, well, it'll be an adventure.

And it all starts tomorrow. See you then!