Countdown

I like completing lists.

When I get near the end of one I tend to make a mad dash to the finish line, and I'm engaged in a few such dashes at the moment.

A few years ago my dad got me '101 Sci-Fi Films to See Before You Die' and I slowly made my way through most of it. In the past couple of months, though, I've been steadily plugging away and now I'm down to the final baker's dozen. Unfortunately a couple are not easy to find, so it may be a while until I can finally knock this one out. The movies still left to see are:

The 10th Victim (1965)
Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (1966)
Time After Time (1979)
Le Dernier Combat (1983)
The Brother from Another Planet (1984)
Dune (1984)
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988)
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
Open Your Eyes (1997)
Code 46 (2003)
Primer (2004)
The Host (2004)
Attack the Block (2011)

(Admittedly I could watch Dune, but I'm going to read the copy on my shelf first.)

Another list, which will take a bit longer, is the Nobel prize winners. I've finally hit 75% completion, however, since reading epic novels takes lots of time, I won't be able to claim victory over this list for a while yet.

Sticking to the realm of literature I'm also one book shy of completing the Penguin Great Ideas series, but that last book is Edward Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. I'm around 675 pages in - or half way. Some months to go, then, I suspect.

Finally there's a list of  1,001 Recordings to Hear Before You Die by Tom Moon. A graduation gift from my sister this excellent collection has sustained me since 2009, but I am finally getting into the last stretch - only 60 recordings to go. Not surprisingly they are not easy to find, as I have been unable so far to track them down in collections ranging from the UC Berkeley music library to YouTube or iTunes or a score of libraries and music stores around the country.

Nevertheless, the whole point of lists is to help organize one's life. I wager it'll only take a few years, at most, for all of these lists to reach completion (and that's mainly due to the Nobel's remaining length). Then I can focus on one of my older on-going lists, such as the best 20th century English language novels (only 45% complete as yet)...