A different list

So, I’m not quite a year into my 30 by 30 list and already I’m making changes. Not a huge one though.

A long time ago a friend of mine linked to a list of 100 books on Facebook. They were all classics that (in my opinion) everyone should at least know about if not have read. It was fun seeing which ones I’d already read and I was a little ashamed at the amount that I have yet to read.

When I started my 30 by 30 list I knew I wanted to give myself a reading goal. I love to read but lately I’ve been too occupied with mindless television to pick up a book. I tend to like to do 5 things at once (Joel always gives me grief about the number of tabs I always have open. Apparently it slows the computer down. Whatever.) and I can have a show playing in the background while I chat on twitter, check my email and read blogs. If I read I have to give the book my full attention. Focusing on just one thing is actually something I should work on more often. I’m quite the scatterbrain lately.

So, when I googled top 100 books and top 100 movies the best ones I found were Time’s. I read through the entire movie list because I added all that I could into my Blockbuster queue. However, I just basically copy and pasted the book list. As things went along and I tried to start going through the list I realized that it wasn’t the list I had been thinking of. I tried searching for the other list but other than reading through a year or two of my friend’s Facebook wall (um, stalker much?) I couldn’t figure out a way to find it.

The thing is, I didn’t just want a list of novels. I’m sure the novels on Time’s list are fantastic but I only recognized a handful. My goal wasn’t to read a bunch of books that I’d never heard of, my goal was to catch up on all the books I thought I should have already read.

So, I finally found the list I was looking for thanks to my resident Google guru. I swear Joel is like the search engine whisperer. I can search for hours and find nothing and in 3 minutes he has what I was looking for and more. It definitely is never annoying.

I don’t consider this cheating since this was the list I intended to read in the first place. I’m still going to cross a 100 books of a list, it’s just a different list than I originally posted. I think this particular list is a lot more comprehensive. It includes non fiction as well which I very rarely read.

I already have read a few of the books. Others I’m almost positive I’ve read but I’m leaving them uncrossed because I want to be sure. I read quite a few abridged books growing up so I want to make sure I read the full versions.

I’m actually excited about this list, much more so than I was about the other one. I feel like I’ll be a much more well rounded person when I finish.