OK, I am glad I didn't bet anyone or any money that I read 50 books. There might be 30 overall, including the ones I left on the train or in Spain. I am a dope.

Also in my rage to list books I am forced to list all the books that I started but that didn't seem rewarding and were put aside for good (marked with *) or that I vaguely mean to pick up again (marked with **) or that I am angsting about not having finished yet (marked with ***) or that I read a little bit of every night (****):

Rebecca West's book about treason **
Proust ****
Hudson River Bracketed, by Edith Wharton *
The Wapshot Scandal ***
Arabia Deserta ****
A book with "Crickets" in the title, by James Sallis *
Neither Three Nor Five, by Helen MacInnes *

The thing that the three one-star books have in common is that they are all very explainy. The Edith Wharton really made me nuts. Every statement is followed by three supporting statements from the history and interior life of the characters. The Sallis book was like the fourth in a series and the first 20 pages were catching up all the characters in a telegraphic way. "He looked at old Cooter and remembered the night at Joe Ed's dock three years ago that Cooter had saved his life with a single defiant act. Now Cooter was standing outside the liquor store. 'Howdy, Cooter,' ..." etc. And the MacInnes was just weird.

Takin' me up to 27:

The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie
Hospital of the Tranfiguration, by Stanislaw Lem
The Warsaw Document, by Adam Hall
Days Like These, by Nigel Fountain
Blade Runner, by Philip K. Dick
Count Down: Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World's Toughest Math Competition, by Steve Olson

Books I have noted reading throughout the year:

Chickenhawk, by the guy who wrote Chickenhawk
The Razor's Edge, by Somerset Maugham
Time for the Stars, by Robert Heinlein
The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K Dick
My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
The K*** R***er, by Legion
Low Life, by Luc Sante
-this takes me to 21 titles for the year so far-

I bet I read 50 books last year. Dang. Here's the Amazon purchases for 2005 that I actually read:
Sin City #s1, 2, 3 and 5, by Frank Miller
Locas, by los bros Hernandez
V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore
HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, by Michel Houellebecq
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, by Martin Clark (skipped to end)
The Smiths' Meat Is Murder, by Joe Pernice
Trawler, by Redmond O'Hanlon
Dear Pussycat: Mash Notes and Missives from the Desk of Cosmopolitan's Legendary Editor, by Helen Gurley Brown
-that's 12-
For the rest of the books I am going to have to trawl around my house. I remember off the top of my head:
The Painted Veil, by Somerset Maugham
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, by Ian Fleming
-that's 14-
I'm not sure whether to count all the home design and general picture books, or Make magazine. I'm not going to count them for now but if I need to pad to get to 50 I will.

Went to New York this weekend with no books at all. It was weird. I didn't meant to not have any books. But so I sat on the train and read the New Yorker's story on the New Orleans police force, and then the story on James Agee. I like James Agee's film criticism. I have tried to read some of his other work and wasn't in the right frame of mind -- which means that though I own a copy of "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," I have never taken the wrapper off it. But because I'm also reading "Here Is Your War" by Ernie Pyle I'm interested again in reading this -- another writer who, however briefly, lived among his un-privileged subjects, clearly reporting on them (not undercover or anything) but in their lives in a sympathetic way.

None of my dad's people were involved in the West Virginia mine story. There were no Italian last names at all. As horrible as the miners' story is, there's also this twisted undercurrent of people from West Virginia wanting to be on TV. Can you imagine being the governor of that state. The last time you were on was during the Big East tournament or something.