Thomas the Birthday Boy

Jason — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:18:17 +0000

Thomas turned 9 last week. He is a great kid, always willing to help, even-tempered (mostly), and a lot of fun. We had a fun birthday party with him last week.

Thomas and his best friend, Payton.

Payton gave Thomas a matching monster sweatshirt.

Thomas scoring some cash from Grandma!

Thomas asked for pumpkin pie instead of cake.

I took Thomas skiing for his birthday. It was his first real skiing and he did great. He caught on quickly and was soon cruising down the hill making some good turns.

Reading 2009

Jason — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:56:20 +0000

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	**

Jason Packham » Uncategorized

Thomas the Birthday Boy

Reading 2009