38 - The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis
A friend recommended this book to me, and said it was both funny and incredibly vulgar. The main character/narrator, Charles Highway, is a 19-year-old studying to get into Oxford, while drinking and having sex as much as he can. He also keeps files on people of interest in his life - his family members, girls he is trying to seduce - and writes down things he plans to say. When he plans to go to a museum exhibit with Rachel, he visits it the day before so he can write down interesting things to say about the art work - including short speeches with planned ‘ums’ and ‘I don’t knows’. When he runs into her unexpectedly, he cuts the meeting short because he doesn’t have notes on what he should say. He’s a quirky character, at first fairly unlikeable. He grows on the reader as he develops respectable qualities - qualities he was probably hoping to avoid.
It was, as promised, funny and extremely vulgar.