Monday, February 02, 2009

My Favorite Movies and Books

Whenever someone asks me to name my top 5 or 10 movies, I am completely stumped. You would think I would know my own taste. I think the problem is, I watch too many movies. Same thing with books. (Just counted from allconsuming.net -- I watched 11 movies in last 2 months and 9 books in last 2 months)

Instead of remembering the last movie or book that I saw or watched that I didn't like, I decided to sit down and really think about what my all time favorites are. The simple test is, would I want to watch the movie again? And would I want to read the book again?

And I came up with this list for movies:
  1. When Harry Met Sally
  2. Princess Bride
  3. Lord of the Rings Trilogy
  4. Welcome to Dongmakgol
  5. Stardust
  6. The Lakehouse
  7. The Way Home
  8. Maverick
  9. Sneakers
  10. Charade
  11. Clueless
  12. Office Space
  13. Matrix
  14. Ever After
  15. Matilda
  16. Wall-E
  17. Bad Boys
  18. Speed
  19. Spiderman

It's kind of a long list, but I wouldn't ever mind watching any of these movies over and over again. In fact, I actually have dvd's for some of them. Sad that only Wall-E made it to my favorite list from last year after all the movies I watched!

As for my recommended book list? I actually ranked my book favorites in the order of preference. But 1-6 are really tied as far as my preference goes.. And "We Wish to Inform You..." gets to the bottom only because it's too heartbreaking to read it over and over again.

  1. Poisonwood Bible
  2. Watership Down
  3. The Centaur in the Garden
  4. Life of Pi
  5. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff
  6. Oryx and Crake
  7. Invisible Man
  8. Blindness
  9. Straight Man
  10. The Stranger
  11. Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
  12. Candide
  13. Ender’s Game
  14. Harry Potter books
  15. Reading Lolita in Tehran
  16. The End of Poverty
  17. Supercapitalism
  18. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
  19. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

I was thinking of doing a post of books I really enjoyed of all the books I read in 2008. But looking at my above list, I realize that only one impressed me ("Blindness").

So now that I have made my list, I'm going to see if this year adds anything to this list. It's kind of sad that the list is composed of movies and books that I had consumed quite a few years ago... I don't think I'm going to delve deeply into what that means on quality of movies and books I consume so much?!?

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