Goals # 28, 29 and 30 – Read the top 10 of the Guardian’s 100 greatest novels of all time, watch 50 of the top films of all time, and read the Bible all the way through

I’ve finally done it! I’ve freed myself from the shackles of my 30 list (and believe me it did take over my life for a while)! I have crossed everything off my 30 list!

It has been quite the experience. It has been a nuisance and a chore at times, but I’m also so glad I did it. It has given me a sense of achievement and I’ve had a fun and eventful year that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

I’m not actually 30 until next Wednesday, but I planned to finish tonight as I am going on holiday tomorrow and want to do so without the pressure of having to tick anything off a list. So today I finished reading the last book on my list, finished the bible and watched the last two films off my list.

Here are the books on the top 10 list:

1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes
2. Pilgrim’s Progress John Bunyan
3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
4. Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift
5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding
6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson
7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne
8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
9. Emma Jane Austen
10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley

Of the above, I really enjoyed Emma, kind of liked Frankenstein, Tom Jones and Gulliver’s Travels, and really hated Don Quixote (so long and not really about anything at all!), Tristram Shandy (could barely understand what was written) and Clarissa (the longest book I ever read which could have been a quarter of the length it is and still told the same story).

And here are the films I watched:

1. Bambi
2. Lawrence of Arabia
3. Gone With the Wind
4. E.T.
5. Back to the Future
6. Star Wars
7. Shawshank Redemption
8. Lord of the Rings
9. Blade Runner
10. Roman Holiday
11. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
12. My Darling Clementine
13. It’s a Wonderful Life
14. Some Like It Hot
15. His Girl Friday
16. Apocalypse Now
17. Schindler’s List
18. Casablanca
19. Kind Hearts and Coronets
20. Dr Strangelove
21. Sunset Boulevard
22. Citizen Kane
23. Bonnie and Clyde
24. All About Eve
25. Annie Hall
26. The Bicycle Thieves
27. The Godfather
28. American Graffiti
29. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
30. Raiders of the Lost Ark
31. It Happened One Night
32. Letter from an Unknown Woman
33. The Third Man
34. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
35. Rear Window
36. Vertigo
37. North By Northwest
38. Amadeus
39. Singin’ In The Rain
40. 2001: A Space Odyssey
41. Chinatown
42. West Side Story
43. Network
44. The Lady Eve
45. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
46. Rebecca
47. Tokyo Story
48. Nashville
49. The Philadelphia Story
50. The Quiet Man

Of this list I really didn’t enjoy Lawrence of Arabia, Apocalypse Now, Dr Strangelove, Citizen Kane and The Godfather! But some of the others were OK! 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of the strangest films I ever saw. My favourites were probably Roman Holiday and Rebecca.

Watching the film definitely expanded my very narrow film watching horizons, and I’ve also spotted lots of references to the films I’ve watched in other TV shows, songs and books, which has made me feel in the know, like I’m in some sort of secret club! 🙂

Reading the Bible was hard going at times, but was also a great experience. I do plan to go through it again more slowly with a study guide, but I’ve learned a lot I didn’t know already and it was the most worthwhile of all my goals.

All in all, I would definitely recommend doing a 30 (or 40 or 50 etc) list to anyone who is considering it! If you are, here are some of my tips:

1. Plan ahead. Some goals are better for different times of the year, some require booking and some will take longer than you think. I’d say it’s best to plan well ahead so you don’t end up like I have having to change any goals (The Northern Lights) or cramming too much into the last couple of days!
2. Mix it up. For a bit of variety, I would suggest mixing different types of goals (physical, intellectual, fun, etc) as well as goals that take different amounts of time (i.e. ones you can do in one day, and ones that carry on throughout the year) and are different levels of difficulty, just to keep it interesting!

3. Be flexible. Sometimes things don’t go to plan, so be prepared to amend goals if necessary. It’s your list, your rules after all!
4. Be realistic. This is something I wasn’t when it came to the amount of things I had to read, and it ended up a bit stressful! Really think about how long things will take and how much time you have to spare. Remember it’s supposed to be fun!

 

So that’s it for me! Thanks to everyone who read, commented or followed any of my blog. It’s been fun!

Goal # 27 – Visit another city by myself

I hadn’t written this one yet as wasn’t sure if I would do another trip too, but the one I had planned never happened due to bad weather and there wasn’t anywhere else I fancied going. However, I did do a trip by myself a few weeks ago to a little town in North Wales (which is just as good as visiting a city) for work, and I traveled there by myself, found the place and conquered some fears by meeting new people, so that’s good enough for me! So, I’m ticking this one off the list. And now I know I can do it, so when the weather is right I can take myself off wherever I like! 🙂

Goal # 26 – Go stargazing

After realising that it would be impossible to see the Northern Lights within the time limit of my list, I decided to think of an alternative for my list and move seeing the Northern Lights until after my 30th. Originally I was going to go to an Aurora Night up north, although it wasn’t likely I would see anything in August, but this was fully booked. So instead I attended a stargazing night at the same observatory.

As it turned out, ticking this goal off my list turned out to be more of an adventure than I anticipated! My mum kindly offered to drive me to the event, which was over 4 hours away in the car, and which started at 11.30pm. So we headed off and all was going well, until the sat nav directed us up a steep windy path. We headed up this path, which was kind of scary in the pitch black with loads of bushes on either side and nobody around. Eventually, after driving for a bit, we thought maybe we were headed in the wrong direction and decided to turn around and go back to see. However, in trying to turn round the car got stuck in a ditch and wouldn’t move (despite our best attempts at pushing!).

There was no signal so we realised the only option was to walk back down this creepy path and find somewhere we could call a rescue service from. Luckily we had brought torches as it was a really dark place (hence it being a suitable place for stargazing) and we wouldn’t have been able to see a thing without.

So we walked for quite some time down this path, me terrified someone was going to jump out on us and both of us worried about whether we were going to be able to find help! Luckily, once we got to the bottom, there was a house across the road which we decided (after a while of weighing up the options) to call at –  frightening the people inside quite a lot, as they were currently in the process of watching a horror movie when they heard a knock on the door in the middle of the night!

Fortunately they were really lovely and kind and let us use the phone and come in and wait while two of them went up the path to try and get our car out – which they did!! 🙂

We were so ridiculously pleased and grateful but also quite tempted to just turn around and go back home. However, we thought after coming all that way we’d have another quick shot at finding the place, which we did!

After finally getting to the place, we spent a lovely two and a half hours there listening to them talking about star formations and galaxies (WAY over my head) and looking at things through telescopes. It was all very pretty. So I may not have seen the Northern Lights, but I saw galaxies, clusters, nebula and lots of other things up there in the sky (I’m sorry, it was all a bit sciencey for me so I can’t be more accurate than this, but it was impressive at the time)! I was also assured that some of the things I saw had been seen by less people than the Northern Lights had, which made me feel better about the list! I also held a piece of the moon and a piece of Mars and saw a shooting star.

So all in all, I may not have seen the Northern Lights yet, but this was an unexpectedly fun and interesting experience which I may never have got if I had!

(PS. Sorry there are no pics, I’m not nearly clever enough or in possession of good enough photographic equipment to get any of anything I saw, and it was too dark to get photos of much else!)

 

 

 

Goals # 23, 24 and 25 – See a play at the Globe Theatre, do a night-time sponsored walk for charity, and have a moonlit picnic

So, I am just over two weeks away from my 30th birthday (eek – bit scared about this!) and it’s safe to say my list has pretty much taken over my life in my desperate attempt to tick off the final things! This is mainly because I left reading Clarissa quite late and it’s unexpectedly thick and quite hard going! I also got way behind on my daily page count for reading the bible so have a fair bit left to go!

However, last weekend I managed to tick off my goal to see a play at the Globe Theatre! I saw King Lear, which was really good. I thought there was maybe a little too much singing and dancing for a tragedy, but on the whole I really enjoyed it.

Then yesterday I took part in a 10k evening walk for charity. Here’s a pic of me ready to go!

Ready for my 10k

It was a great atmosphere and I really enjoyed the event, and afterwards I got to tick off my goal to have a moonlit picnic.

Originally, when I came up with the list, my idea was to have a romantic picnic, as I was optimistic (kind of) about the idea I might find someone to do this with in the course of a year, however this turned out to be not the case. But in the spirit of being an independent woman I figured I could do this without a man 🙂 And the sponsored walk provided the perfect opportunity for a group picnic in lovely surroundings with live music, surrounded by lots of people celebrating the completion of the 10k walk and funds raised for a good cause. Here is a pic:

Moonlit picnic

It turned out to be a lovely night – and now I only have 5 more goals to tick off my list! 🙂