Jason Packham » books http://www.jasonpackham.com Stuff that interests me; things I feel like saying Mon, 05 Dec 2011 01:33:48 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Reading 2009 http://www.jasonpackham.com/2010/01/reading-2009/ http://www.jasonpackham.com/2010/01/reading-2009/#comments Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:56:20 +0000 Jason http://www.jasonpackham.com/?p=146 Continue reading →]]> I got a Kindle for Christmas last year and my reading has increased significantly. I read 45 books in 2009 compared to 30 in 2008. Of those, 27 were Kindle books. I’m also still a big audio book fan, listening to 17 audio books this year.  I’d like to shoot for a goal of 52 books in 2010, but realistically I think I’ll be more around 40. Last year was unique and I had an unusual amount of free-time and travel time to get a lot of reading in. But I still hope to take advantage of my time and enjoy some more great books in 2010. Any recommendations or must reads? Always looking for a good book.

I enjoyed most of the books I read in 2009, with just a few duds in there. Here’s my list with the highest rated first.

Title Author Rating
Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout *****
Brooklyn Colm Toibin *****
Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë *****
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Mary Ann Shaffer *****
American Pastoral Philip Roth *****
The Love of a Good Woman Alice Munro *****
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie Alan Bradley *****
A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini ****
Great Expectations Charles Dickens ****
Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2 Annie Proulx ****
Let the Great World Spin Colum McCann ****
Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You Alice Munro ****
Goodbye, Columbus : And Five Short Stories Philip Roth ****
Agnes Grey Anne Brontë ****
Knockemstiff Donald Ray Pollock ****
Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens ****
My Man Jeeves P. G. Wodehouse ****
Night Elie Wiesel ****
Revolutionary Road Richard Yates ****
Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut ****
The Corrections Jonathan Franzen ****
The Forever War Dexter Filkins ****
The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck ****
The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford ****
The White Tiger Aravind Adiga ****
Three Cups of Tea Greg Mortenson ****
Tell No One Harlan Coben ****
The Humbling Philip Roth ****
The Northern Clemency Philip Hensher ****
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Anne Bronte ****
The Uncommon Reader Alan Bennett ****
Little Bee Chris Cleave ****
When You Are Engulfed in Flames David Sedaris ****
A Separate Peace John Knowles ***
Breakfast of Champions or Goodbye Blue Monday! Kurt Vonnegut ***
Caught Stealing Charlie Huston ***
Cranford Elizabeth Gaskell ***
Sabbath’s Theater Philip Roth ***
Six Bad Things Charlie Huston ***
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Stieg Larsson ***
The Mysterious Benedict Society Trenton Lee Stewart ***
UR Stephen King ***
Where Angels Fear to Tread E. M. Forster ***
Serena Ron Rash **
Until Proven Guilty J.A. Jance **

]]> http://www.jasonpackham.com/2010/01/reading-2009/feed/ 3 My Library http://www.jasonpackham.com/2007/08/my-library/ http://www.jasonpackham.com/2007/08/my-library/#comments Mon, 13 Aug 2007 21:15:49 +0000 Jason http://packhams.com/blogs/jason/2007/08/13/my-library/ Continue reading →]]> A few years ago I created an excel file of all the books I’ve read (that I could remember). It’s kind of nerdy, but hey, I love reading and making lists–I blame Dad. I remember being intrigued by reading Dad’s list of books read that he kept in his journal.

I’ve had some fun recently transferring my excel list to a cool website called LibraryThing. Check out my library. It’s got cool tagging features (Search my tags for “reading” to see what I’m currently working on. Or search “unread” to see all the books I’ve acquired but haven’t yet got around to reading.) and book recommendation and community features. I think the “cover view” is kind of cool:

coversview.JPG

I’ve got 317 books in my catalog, 239 tagged as read.

The author cloud is kind of cool, too:

authorcloud.JPG

Create your own library. It’d be fun to see what you have read or are currently reading. It’s also fun trying to remember all the books you’ve read.

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