Can you read 26 books in 2014? Take the #Read26Indy challenge

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they'll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back." - John Green, "An Abundance of Katherines"

New Year's resolutions are rarely acted on. I'm guilty of it, and you're guilty of it. The trick is to have support, which is exactly what #Read26Indy is. But instead of having a few friends hold you accountable for your vows, you have an entire city.

The pledge: I'm calling on every Hoosier to read 26 books in 2014. Think of it as your informal education, a collective challenge. One book every two weeks. That's 20 pages a day (if you figure that the average novel is 280-300 pages long). When you start a book, let everyone know about it on Twitter by using the hashtag #Read26Indy. Feel like telling us what you're drinking while you're reading? Have at it, but use #Read26Indy. Can't stand a character? Want to rant about it? #Read26Indy is your pedestal. The point is to read. Like Faulkner said, "Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad."

Can't decide what to read? Tweet it out. #Read26Indy has already gathered a large following, and people are eager to tell you about their favorite books. I'll also be keeping this page up-to-date with what I'm reading and I urge you to join our Goodreads group, #Read26Indy, to discuss your picks with other readers.

Michael's 26:

1. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) - Yes, I have committed one of Indiana's mortal sins; I've never read Vonnegut. He was never assigned in high school as required reading (not that I would've read him even if he was--books, according to 18-year-old me, were a waste of time). So now I will take the proverbial plunge and begin the year, and the #Read26Indy challenge, with "one of the world's great anti-war books."

What I appreciated most about Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" was his ability to convince the reader that no matter how strange and inconceivable things got, by the end of the book you' were left with a feeling that everything did happened, more than less.

2. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1939) - James Agee, the author best known for his novel "A Death in the Family," and for his film criticisms in The Nation, traveled to rural Alabama in the summer of 1936 with photographer Walker Evans to document the lives of sharecroppers for Fortune magazine. Agee wrote in the preface to the book that the original assignment was to be a "photographic and verbal record of the daily living and environment of an average white family of tenant farmers." When Agee returned after spending eight weeks living among the tenants, Fortune refused to publish his article, so he used the material to compile what is now "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men."

Contact Star reporter Michael Anthony Adams at (317) 444-6123. Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelAdams317