My name is Mary and I’m addicted to making lists. I have about 3 different lists I’m working on right now just to get me through the last few weeks of the semester. I need lists to keep me on track and keep me sane. There is just something therapeutic about putting all the things I need to accomplish on paper and getting them out of my head. I find it so cathartic to be able to check things off my list, it even gives me a sense of fulfillment. And can I just say that there is nothing in the world like the feeling of finishing the last thing on a list and being able to throw it away into the trash, free of it forever. It’s definitely one of my favorite things.
The other day in between my long day at the hospital, studying for an exam and working on a paper (all on a current list mind you), I turned around and realized that I was 23 years old and that my life is nothing like how I imagined it would be by now. Realistically 23 years is more than a quarter of my life lived and I’m not sure I’m on track with where I should be. I’m not sure I know who I am and where I want to go yet, and I’m not sure I like that. If there is anything the last 23 years have taught me it is that I can no more plan out how my life will go than I can control the weather. I guess writing 'to do' lists is my way of taking hold of the smaller things. That being said, I realize there are a lot of big things in my life that I can control and I think it’s time for me to start. So the decision I’ve reached is to start making lists for my life. As much as I love lists I’m not sure why it took me so long to start doing this. I want to make lists to help guide what I do and where I go and maybe someday they will help me figure out who I want to be. I wanted to take this journey on a blog because I thought it would be neat to have a record of the changes that I experience throughout the process, and maybe find some other people who want to take the journey with me or give me a little push along the way.
So as is my usual style I will have many different lists going at the same time, and I will jump back and forth between them. The first thing I realize when looking at my life is that I don’t read enough. Well let me preface that, I read a ton of textbooks, case studies and journal articles, but I read very rarely for enjoyment. My field as you may have gathered is medical, and in my entire 4 years of undergrad I never once had to take an English lit. class (I tested out of them because at the time they seemed like a waste of money and semester hours). I regret that now because no one has forced me to pick up any great books since high school. I think it’s definitely time for that to change. There are so many pieces of literature that shaped the development of art and society and the world and I just haven’t read them. I have a list of 100 works of literature I want to read before I die, and it’s entirely possible it will take me just that long to finish them all.
Here is my list of 100 things I want to read before I die. They are not in the order that I will read them or in any order of importance. In all honesty I had a list of about 125 things that were contenders for the top 100 so I reserve the right to make substitutions as time goes on.
1. 1984, George Orwell
2. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
3. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
4. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
5. The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
6. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
7. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
8. Catch 22, Joseph Heller
9. A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens
10. Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White
11. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
13. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
14. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
15. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
16. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
19. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austin
20. Emma, Jane Austin
21. Persuasion , Jane Austin
22. Watership Down, Richard Adams
23. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
24. The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
25. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
26. Dracula, Bram Stoker
27. The Iliad, Homer
28. The Odyssey, Homer
29. The Republic , Plato
30. The Call of the Wild, Jack London
31. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
32. Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift
33. The Time Machine, H.G. Wells
34. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (as Victoria Lucas)
35. Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen
36. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
37. James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
38. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston
39. The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis
40. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
41. Tess of the d’Urbevilles, Thomas Hardy
42. My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult
43. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
44. The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
45. Animal Farm, George Orwell
46. The Cider House Rules, John Irving
47. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair
48. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
49. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
50. Old yeller, Fred Gipson
51. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
52. The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain
53. Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank
54. Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
55. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote
56. Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott
57. The Jungle book, Rudyard Kipling
58. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
59. Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers
60. Utopia, Sir Thomas More
61. Howard’s End, E.M. Forester
62. The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
63. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
64. A Walk to Remember, Nicholas Sparks
65. The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
66. Peter Pan or ‘Peter and Wendy’, J.M. Barrie
67. Little Men, Louisa May Alcott
68. As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner
69. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
70. Marley and Me: love and life with the world’s worst dog, John Grogan
71. A Time to Kill, John Grisham
72. The Green Mile, Stephen king
73. The Shawshank Redemption, Stephen King
74. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Victor Hugo
75. Dawn, Elie Wiesel
76. Big Fish, Daniel Wallace
77. The Fox and the Hound, Daniel P. Mannix
78. Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe
79. The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells
80. Paradise Lost, John Milton
81. The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine
82. The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
83. The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje
84. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
85. Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton
86. The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
87. The Divine Comedy, Dante Aleghieri
88. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
89. The Pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman
90. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
91. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
92. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
93. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
94. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
95. The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine
96. Absalom, Absalom!, William Faulkner
97. Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
98. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
99. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
100. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
What a good list! I really love when I find a book I can really get into to. I hope that all of these on your list will be that for you! I'm excited to follow your blog and see your lists and get to see you check them off!
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