Film & Literature

Call me pretentious if you want to but I like ‘keeping score,’ so to speak, on the cultural products I consume. My film and literature consumption is by no means limited to the items in these lists but I like the idea of, over my lifetime, seeing and reading what many consider to be some of the best film and literature that humans have created. I also like the idea of sharing it with others and inviting discussion and recommendations. I’ll continue updating this as long as I keep this blog. The ones in bold are the ones I’ve seen/read.

ACADEMY AWARD BEST PICTURES

• 2010 – “The King’s Speech”
• 2009 – “The Hurt Locker”
• 2008 – “Slumdog Millionaire”
• 2007 – “No Country for Old Men”
• 2006 – “The Departed”
• 2005 – “Crash”
• 2004 – “Million Dollar Baby”
• 2003 – “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King”
• 2002 – “Chicago”
• 2001 – “A Beautiful Mind”
• 2000 – “Gladiator”
• 1999 – “American Beauty”
• 1998 – “Shakespeare in Love”
• 1997 – “Titanic”
• 1996 – “The English Patient”
• 1995 – “Braveheart”
• 1994 – “Forrest Gump”
• 1993 – “Schindler’s List”
• 1992 – “Unforgiven”
• 1991 – “The Silence of the Lambs”
• 1990 – “Dances With Wolves”
• 1989 – “Driving Miss Daisy”
• 1988 – “Rain Man”
• 1987 – “The Last Emperor”
• 1986 – “Platoon”
• 1985 – “Out of Africa”
• 1984 – “Amadeus”
• 1983 – “Terms of Endearment”
• 1982 – “Gandhi”
• 1981 – “Chariots of Fire”
• 1980 – “Ordinary People”
• 1979 – “Kramer vs. Kramer”
• 1978 – “The Deer Hunter”
• 1977 – “Annie Hall”
• 1976 – “Rocky”
• 1975 – “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
• 1974 – “The Godfather Part II”
• 1973 – “The Sting”
• 1972 – “The Godfather”
• 1971 – “The French Connection”
• 1970 – “Patton”
• 1969 – “Midnight Cowboy”
• 1968 – “Oliver!”
• 1967 – “In the Heat of the Night”
• 1966 – “A Man for All Seasons”
• 1965 – “The Sound of Music”
• 1964 – “My Fair Lady”
• 1963 – “Tom Jones”
• 1962 – “Lawrence of Arabia”
• 1961 – “West Side Story”
• 1960 – “The Apartment”
• 1959 – “Ben-Hur”
• 1958 – “Gigi”
• 1957 – “The Bridge on the River Kwai”
• 1956 – “Around the World in 80 Days”
• 1955 – “Marty”
• 1954 – “On the Waterfront”
• 1953 – “From Here to Eternity”
• 1952 – “The Greatest Show on Earth”
• 1951 – “An American in Paris”
• 1950 – “All About Eve”
• 1949 – “All the Kings Men”
• 1948 – “Hamlet”
• 1947 – “Gentleman’s Agreement”
• 1946 – “The Best Years of Our Lives”
• 1945 – “The Lost Weekend”
• 1944 – “Going My Way”
• 1943 – “Casablanca”
• 1942 – “Mrs. Miniver”
• 1941 – “How Green Was My Valley”
• 1940 – “Rebecca”
• 1939 – “Gone with the Wind”
• 1938 – “You Can’t Take It with You”
• 1937 – “The Life of Emile Zola”
• 1936 – “The Great Ziegfeld”
• 1935 – “Mutiny on the Bounty”
• 1934 – “It Happened One Night”
• 1932/1933 – “Cavalcade”
• 1931/1932 – “Grand Hotel”
• 1930/1931 – “Cimarron”
• 1929/1930 – “All Quiet on the Western Front”
• 1928/1929 – “The Broadway Melody”
• 1927/1928 – “Wings”

PULITZER PRIZE FOR GENERAL NON-FICTION

• 1962:The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore White
• 1963:The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman
• 1964: Anti-intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
• 1965:O Strange New World by Howard Mumford Jones
• 1966:Wandering Through Winter by Edwin Way Teale
• 1967:The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis
• 1968:Rousseau and Revolution, vol. 10 of The Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant.
• 1969:So Human an Animal by Rene Jules Dubos
• 1969:The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer
• 1970:Gandhi’s Truth by Erik H. Erikson
• 1971:The Rising Sun by John Toland
• 1972:Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45 by Barbara W. Tuchman
• 1973:Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald
• 1973:Children of Crisis, vols. 2 and 3, by Robert Coles
• 1974:The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
• 1975:Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
• 1976:Why Survive? Being Old In America by Robert Neil Butler
• 1977:Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner
• 1978:The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
• 1979:On Human Nature by Edward O. Wilson
• 1980:Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter
• 1981:Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carl E. Schorske
• 1982:The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
• 1983:Is There No Place on Earth for Me? by Susan Sheehan
• 1984:The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr
• 1985:The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two by Studs Terkel
• 1986:Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas
• 1986:Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White by Joseph Lelyveld
• 1987:Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K. Shipler
• 1988:The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
• 1989:A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
• 1990:And Their Children After Them by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson
• 1991:The Ants by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson
• 1992:The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power by Daniel Yergin
• 1993:Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills
• 1994:Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire by David Remnick
• 1995:The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
• 1996:The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenberg
• 1997:Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger
• 1998: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
• 1999:Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
• 2000:Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower
• 2001:Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix
• 2002:Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter
• 2003:“A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
• 2004:Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
• 2005:Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll
• 2006:Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins
• 2007:The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
• 2008:The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedlander
• 2009:Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon
• 2010:The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman
• 2011:Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

TIME TOP 100 NOVELS

• The Adventures of Augie March
• All the King’s Men
• American Pastoral
• An American Tragedy
• Animal Farm
• Appointment in Samarra
• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
• The Assistant
• At Swim-Two-Birds
• Atonement
• Beloved
• The Berlin Stories
• The Big Sleep
• The Blind Assassin
• Blood Meridian
• Brideshead Revisited
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey
• Call It Sleep
• Catch-22
• The Catcher in the Rye
• A Clockwork Orange
• The Confessions of Nat Turner
• The Corrections
• The Crying of Lot 49
• A Dance to the Music of Time
• The Day of the Locust
• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• A Death in the Family
• The Death of the Heart
• Deliverance
• Dog Soldiers
• Falconer
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman
• The Golden Notebook
• Go Tell it on the Mountain
• Gone With the Wind
• The Grapes of Wrath
• Gravity’s Rainbow
• The Great Gatsby
• A Handful of Dust
• The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
• The Heart of the Matter
• Herzog
• Housekeeping
• A House for Mr. Biswas
• I, Claudius
• Infinite Jest
• Invisible Man
• Light in August
• The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
• Lolita
• Lord of the Flies
• The Lord of the Rings
• Loving
• The Moviegoer
• Lucky Jim
• The Man Who Loved Children
• Midnight’s Children
• Money
• Mrs. Dalloway
• Naked Lunch
• Native Son
• Neuromancer
• Never Let Me Go
• 1984
• On the Road
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• The Painted Bird
• Pale Fire
• A Passage to India
• Play It As It Lays
• Portnoy’s Complaint
• Possession
• The Power and the Glory
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
• Rabbit, Run
• Ragtime
• The Recognitions
• Red Harvest
• Revolutionary Road
• The Sheltering Sky
• Slaughterhouse Five
• Snow Crash
• The Sot-Weed Factor
• The Sound and the Fury
• The Sportswriter
• The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
• The Sun Also Rises
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• Things Fall Apart
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• To the Lighthouse
• Tropic of Cancer
• Ubik
• Under the Net
• Under the Volcano
• Watchmen
• White Noise
• White Teeth
• Wide Sargasso Sea