Progress so far

I've been trying to read a book a week this year... apparently, I've done 19 books in 20 weeks. So far (in rough chronological order):

1. Indecision - Benjamin Kunkel (240pgs)
2. A Year in Provence - Peter Mayle (207)
3. The Flaneur - Edmund White (211)
4. Damage - Josephine Hart (195)
5. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (192)
6. The Plot Against America - Philip Roth (391)
7. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides (529)
8. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (457)
9. A Mouthful of Air - Anthony Burgess (416)
10. Against Love - Laura Kipnis (207)
11. Woe is I - Patricia O'Connor
12. Paris to the Moon - Adam Gopnik (342)
13. Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh (348)
14. Stories of Roald Dahl - R. Dahl (520)
15. Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins (342)
16. Candide - Voltaire (120)
17. How I Became Stupid - Martin Page (160)
18. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (489)
19. Ada (in progress) - Vladimir Nabokov (445)

This is 5,593 pages, or 280 pgs/week. Of course, after I started, I realized that anything over 500 pages was tough to do in a week, since I enjoy other activities as well (idleness, drinking). So, I'm focusing a little more on page count, since it's a more accurate reflection of progress, and doesn't penalize for a long, tough book. I'd like to hit 300 pgs a week, at least. DON'T CALL ME, I CAN NOT HANG OUT WITH YOU.

The clear winner so far has been The Plot Against America, a fucking fabulous book that I would recommend to anyone, though I think Ben probably got tired of me talking about it all the time. Other favorites were the Anthony Burgess books, A Clockwork Orange (which really made me love the movie even more) and A Mouthful of Air (a non-fiction book about language); Jitterbug Perfume; Indecision; and The Complete Stories of Roald Dahl (they're stories for adults). And, you know, Lolita. I had actually read Lolita before, but I gave it to Ben for Christmas, so I decided to read it again when he started reading it; somehow I ended up with the annotated version, which was interesting. Or hellish, whatever. In any case, it's a totally different book with the notes, and you probably owe it to yourself to read this version. It's kind of like repeatedly whipping yourself with a giant bunch of thorns, but some people like that. I sorta did.

The clear loser was How I Became Stupid. Since I love tales geared towards disillusioned 20-somethings (since, you know, those are my dawgs) I picked it up, only to have my naive hopes dashed by what I will now dub "Ye Olde Worste Book Ever." Seriously, if you're going to delve into that realm, have a point. "I don't know what to do with my life!" fiction is cool, but it's been done about 84 million times before, so you better do it well. (And, on that note, Indecision succeeds! Until the end. Maybe) As Dave Eggers once said, in some quote that I can't really remember at all and now suspect that I am making up entirely... the lives of people in their early 20's really aren't all that interesting.

Ada is a tough, lovely book, but I'm sure I'll talk more about that either later or never. Who knows!