30 by 30 Update

Kim Toomey — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 04:50:23 +0000

Dylan recently asked me how my 30 by 30 list was coming along and I do have one thing crossed off the list (Go Zags! NCAA basketball tournament game complete!)

But one of my bigger goals is to read every book that has won a Pulitzer award for fiction. That’s a lot of books. I think I got this hairbrained idea watching Jeopardy and it was a category and I thought that would be cool to have read every one of those books, so I started.

Here’s the one’s I’ve read so far:

2007- The Road
2003 – Middlesex
2001 – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
1993 – A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
1988 – Beloved
1985 – Foreign Affairs
1963 – The Reivers
1961 – To Kill a Mockingbird
1932 – The Good Earth
1926 – Arrowsmith
1921 – The Age of Innocence

So 11 out of probably 80 some-odd books left to read (good thing I have a few years left to get this all done!) It’s an interesting experiment to see the differences in story and writing that will win you this award. Of course some that I’ve read I enjoyed more than others. And I don’t think I ever finished The Age of Innocence, I had to read it for a college class and despised that book. Sorry. And honestly, I haven’t read anything yet that I’ve been totally in love with. I should probably re-read To Kill a Mockingbird because I read it in 8th grade and probably doesn’t count anymore. Although I will say that I did particularly enjoy the Reivers, but if you are not a Faulkner fan then you might not like it.
I picked up another Pulitzer Prize winning book at Powells before my last vacation and have since discovered that it won for Non-Fiction, so that’s not helping my list any. Sigh. I’m about halfway through with it so I might as well finish it, right? I also need to get a big bookshelf for our house because I have books scattered everywhere and it’s driving me crazy

30 Things by 30

Kim Toomey — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:43:06 +0000

Well, in the spirit of new years resolutions and overall life achievements I have decided to actually write down 30 things I want to accomplish by the time I’m thirty. I’m giving myself 6 1/2 years become some are pretty ambitious and time consuming, and I’m a pretty busy gal. Here they are.

Read every work of fiction that has won the Pulitzer Prize
Run a marathon
Go to Europe
Pay off student loans
Learn to speak another language – enough to hold a basic conversation with a native speaker
Have a poem published
Drink a REALLY expensive bottle of wine to see if its worth it
“Finish” our house projects (is it ever really done though?)
Plant Dahlias and get them to grow/bloom
Read the bible
Finish a crossword puzzle on my own – on a hard day
Have a well trained dog (please, oh please)
Take a train
Learn to surf
Find my signature drink that makes me look cool/sophisticated/classy
Learn to snowboard
Learn to confidently drive a car with a manual transmission
Splurge on an expensive piece of jewelry for myself
Camp in a yurt
Go to Hawaii
Make a quilt for someone
Grow a vegetable garden
Re-learn how to play the piano
Go to an NCAA basketball tournament game
Make a good profit selling our first house
Own real furniture (as in furniture not from Ikea)
Upgrade to a king size bed (I like my space)
Go to South American (lots of travel, I know)
See a great concert in awesome seats
Host Thanksgiving dinner for all our family

Just a few things to do. I know that if you write all these things down you are 100x more likely to accomplish them, so there we go.

NE Portland Findings » goals

30 by 30 Update

30 Things by 30