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If someone had told me I was a better movie-goer than reader, I would have scoffed at them. Little did I know.

Last week I checked out the list of the 100 best novels according to the book critics at Time magazine.

Turns out I've read 35 of them.

The two disclaimers about the list are that they don't include any books before 1923, when Time began publishing, or any books not originally written in English.

That narrows the field somewhat, but I was still not impressed with my score. There were at least a half dozen or more books I thought I might have read, but I wasn't sure. Hey, I'm old. I probably read them and don't remember.

This little exercise led me to Time's list of the top 100 movies their critics had compiled a few months ago. The same restrictions applied to this list.

I came up with 41 movies I'm pretty sure I saw.

Of course, you can watch a movie in less time than it takes to read most novels.

Anyway, you can find Time's lists at time.com/100 books and /100movies.

Was I surprised by some of the picks on the list? Sure.

I was glad to see `` Lucky Jim,'' `` On the Road,'' `` Naked Lunch'' and `` Gravity's Rainbow'' on the book list, and `` The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,'' `` Wings of Desire,'' `` Pulp Fiction'' and `` Bride of Frankenstein'' on the movie list.

Give it a shot.

I can take it

Barry LaCasse had the best zinger of the night Thursday at the candidates forum at Agudas Achim. Barry is city council president and is running unopposed, but in his brief remarks he said, `` There is nothing so bad that The Sun Chronicle can't make worse.'' Ya gotta love him.

Feedback

`` I can count on one hand the number of times over the years that I have been moved enough to actually write into the paper about something I've read,'' writes Noreen McKay Dalton of Foxboro. `` Your column this past Sunday is most definitely the strongest incentive I've had.''

`` It literally brought tears to my eyes when I read it initially, and I haven't been able to forget it since then,'' she writes about my piece on the death in Iraq of the son of an old school buddy.

`` I cut the column out and have re-read it several times. Perhaps it's that I have a teenage son myself, and cannot imagine the depth of loss I would feel if he were gone. Or maybe it's just how well you personalized the pain of the parents of every one of those 2,000, and put a face on the child crossing that last street alone ... what a haunting image.

`` It's important that we not think of these people just as numbers, one of 2,000. I want you to know that you have done an admirable job of reminding us of just what those numbers mean. Don't let us become comfortable and accepting -- make us angry or make us cry, but above all, make us think.''

Thank you, Noreen.

Hooray, we won a prize

The New England Newspapers Advertising Executives Association awarded us a first prize at its recent convention.

The category? Best Blooper.

We ran an ad in July for a now defunct restaurant that was advertising its fish dishes. One dish was Fried Striper. We had it as `` Fried Stripper.''

See you next week.

rdrtrdrsrdrw15rsp160 ORESTE P. D'ARCONTE is publisher of The Sun Chronicle. Reach him at darconte(at)thesunchronicle.com or at 508.236.0394.