So, out of my infinite love of making lists, and my desire to not waste too much time reading and watching random things this year, but instead to use my time to challenge myself and catch up on some stuff I should never have missed, I have compiled a list of 20 books and 50 movies for 2006. This is roughly half my total reading/watching goal in each case, which should leave time for the random and unexpected. Accent on the should, because I may instead burn myself out on reading and watching by trying too hard and instead end up whimpering in the corner for months. Ah well.

These lists have undergone many, many, many changes, up to and including right now, and I wouldn't mind seeing them refined a bit more. So if you get a chance, take a look, and tell me 2-3 in each case that you'd take off the list, and what you'd replace them with.


The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer (I've read a good bit of this already, but I want to finish it up) 5/18/06 ****
Egil's Saga - anonymous Icelandic saga 3/29/06 ***
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Beautiful and the Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald 3/26/06 ***
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* - James Joyce 5/29/06 ***
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Italo Calvino* 4/30/06 ***1/2
Love in the Time of the Cholera - Gabriel Maria Marquez
The Castle - Franz Kafka
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera 6/27/06 ***1/2
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
The Once and Future King - T.E. White
Digital Fortress - Dan Brown 4/9/06 BOMB
Wicked - Gregory Maguire
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 2/11/06 ***1/2
The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova 3/25/06 ***
On Literature - Umberto Eco 1/31/06 ****
The Common Reader - Virginia Woolf 7/29/06 ***
How to Read a Film - James Monaco
Hitchcock's Films - Robin Wood 7/15/06 ****

*modifed 2/20 from Ulysses. I realized that I should probably start more gradually on Joyce.
*modified 4/1 from Thomas Pynchon's V. After looking more closely at the Pynchon, I decided I was WAY more interested in following my current Calvino obsession than tackling Pynchon.


Les Vampires - 1915 (Louis Feuillade)
Way Down East - 1920 (D.W. Griffith) 5/29/06 ***
The Gold Rush - 1924 (Charlie Chaplin) 7/9/06 ***1/2
Sunrise - 1927 (F.W. Murnau)
I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang - 1932 (Mervyn LeRoy)
Sons of the Desert - 1933 (Laurel & Hardy)
Triumph of the Will - 1934 (Leni Reifenstahl) 8/26/06 ***
Grand Illusion - 1937 (Jean Renoir) 8/27/06 ****
The Great Dictator - 1940 (Charlie Chaplin)
Ossessione - 1943 (Luciano Visconti) 8/19/06 ***
Open City - 1945 (Roberto Rossellini) 5/18/06 ***1/2
A Matter of Life and Death - 1946 (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
The Killers - 1946 (Robert Siodmak)
White Heat - 1949 (Raoul Walsh)
Winchester '73 - 1950 (Anthony Mann) 6/12/06 ***1/2
In a Lonely Place - 1950 (Nicolas Ray) 1/28/06 ****
Night and the City - 1950 (Jules Dassin) 1/3/06 ***
The African Queen - 1951 (John Huston)
A Streetcar Named Desire - 1951 (Elia Kazan)
Umberto D - 1952 (Vittorio De Sica)
Tokyo Story - 1953 (Yashujiro Uzo)
The Big Heat - 1953 (Fritz Lang) 1/24/06 ***1/2
Night of the Hunter - 1955 (Charles Laughton) 7/17/06 ***
Les Diaboliques - 1955 (Henri-Georges Clouzot) 7/9/06 ***1/2
Smiles of a Summer Night - 1955 (Ingmar Bergman) 6/28/06 ****
Paths of Glory - 1957 (Stanley Kubrick) 3/24/06 ***
Mon Oncle - 1958 (Jacques Tati) 7/20/06 ***1/2
L'Avventura - 1962 (Michelangelo Antonioni)
The Exterminating Angel - 1962 (Luis Bunuel) 6/6/06 ***
Closely Watched Trains - 1966 (Jirí Menzel) 9/10/06 ***
A Man For All Seasons - 1966 (Fred Zinnemann)
Sholay - 1970 (Ramesh Sippy) 6/1/06 ***1/2
M*A*S*H - 1970 (Robert Altman)
All the President's Men - 1976 (Alan J. Pakula)
Apocalypse Now - 1979 (Francis Ford Coppola)
Gandhi - 1982 (Richard Attenborough) 9/17/06 ***1/2
Grave of the Fireflies - 1988 (Isao Takahata) 2/27/06 ***1/2
Farewell My Concubine - 1993 (Kaige Chen)
Before Sunrise - 1995 (Richard Linklater) 12/15/06 ***1/2
The English Patient - 1995 (Anthony Minghella) 12/31/06 ***1/2
Amores Perros - 2000 (Alejandro González Inárritu) - 4/12/06 ***
Before Sunset - 2004 (Richard Linklater) 12/18/06 **1/2
Night Watch - 2004 (Timur Bekmambetov) 8/5/06 **1/2
The Constant Gardener - 2005 (Fernando Meirelles) 4/24/06 ***1/2
Good Night and Good Luck - 2005 (George Clooney) 2/4/06 ***1/2
Broken Flowers - 2005 (Jim Jarmusch) 4/4/06 ***
Proof - 2005 (John Madden) 4/27/06 ***
Capote - 2005 (Bennett Miller) 5/11/06 ***1/2
Mad Hot Ballroom - 2005 (Marilyn Agrelo) 1/25/06 ***
Match Point - 2005 (Woody Allen) 1/22/06 ***