We’ll still call this year’s friendly reading competition an “office” read-off, even though Blake and I are unfortunately not in the same office anymore since I changed jobs in February and moved to another state. In any case, I’m way behind so far this year after getting a little bogged down in “Madison and Jefferson,” the review of which you can read here.

I’m at 3,265 pages so far this year, which I think is a little behind this point last year. He’s way above that, so yeah, the situation on my end is a bit grim at this point. I’m trusting that he might get bogged down later this year, but if things progress as they are right now, I will get smoked.

Here are the books I’ve finished thus far in 2012:

- “Grant” by Jean Edward Smith, 628 pages, finished late January (minus 200 pages read in 2011)

- “The Killer Angels” by Michael Shaara, 374 pages, finished Feb. 12

- “General Lee’s Army: From Victory To Collapse” by Joseph Glatthaar, 475 pages

- “This Mighty Scourge” by James McPherson, 272 pages

- “State of Denial” by Bob Woodward, 491 pages, finished April 2

- “The Greatest Show On Earth” by Richard Dawkins, 437 pages, started late March, finished May 13

- “Madison and Jefferson” by Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg, 644 pages, started May 16, finished July 21

- “From the Temple to the Castle” by Lee Morrissey, 144 pages, started May 13, finished July 22

Total: 3,265 pages as of July 23.

I’m a little behind on the page count from last year at this time, but I’m pretty confident that I can have a strong rest of the year. “Madison and Jefferson,” which was very good, but to me, it was a bit longer than it needed to be and kind of dragged me down. I’m excited about the books that I have in the works.

They include:

• “You Can’t Go Home Again” by Thomas Wolfe
• “Lyndon Johnson and American Liberalism” by Bruce Schulman
• “Origins of the New South” by C. Vann Woodward
• “The Civil War” by John Keegan