North Carolina Books

What an amazing resource for anyone who is considering a purchase of real estate in North Carolina. I'm not a real estate professional, but I do live in NC, and the opportunities for making a great real estate investment here are well worth checking out. The authors have done a great job of putting together advice and tips that every buyer and seller should know. It doesn't matter if you are a first-time buyer, an investor or whether you are looking at commercial or residential, you should check this book out before you make any decisions. Good luck.

This is a valuable book (resource) for budding entrepreneurs. It seems to try to cover all the bases for starting a small business, but it can't do them all well in the space available between its covers. The book is only 288 pages long. If you are in the planning stages of starting a small business, then I highly recommend you get a copy of this book. Read it, study it, and outline it. There are helpful checklists to help you grasp the subjects. You will come up with a plethora of keywords and terms that you will want to google to find Web pages giving more detailed (and maybe more current) information.

I am a SCORE counselor (Senior Corps of Retired Executives) who typically does face-to-face counseling sessions three nights a month. It would really be neat if my clients would read this book BEFORE they came to their session with me because they would pretty much be "educated customers" ready to ask educated questions. Our sessions would be so much more beneficial.

My favorite chapters were:

1. Initial business concerns
2. Your business' structure
3. Business start-up details
5. Sources of business assistance (SCORE is mentioned here)
7. Your smart business plan (and a good sample plan is included)
8. Obtaining the financing you need

The book is weak when it comes to how the Internet can be used in corresponding, hiring, and marketing. But this is just one example of how googling keywords and concepts found in the book will make the book more complete. Don't treat the book as authoritative on the law. It isn't. Nor was it ever intended to be. It is light on tax information as it relates to small business.

I was particularly impressed with the material presented in Chapter 2: Choice of Legal Entity. That subject is sorely ignored in most small business books, and it is critically important. It is a subject I regularly must spend a great deal of time discussing at my SCORE sessions. This book does a pretty good job on the topic.

Chapters 4 and 9 through 12 are easy to find fault with. The topic of each could fill a book. But having these topics covered definitely will help a budding entrepreneur know some of the issues they raise.

I would have liked the book more if Chapter 6 (marketing) had been less superficial. When I read it I got the impression that the author was more a public relations expert than a marketing expert. I generally categorize public relations as a subset of marketing. Marketing includes advertising, public relations, and a whole host of other promotion techniques. I did not get this message when I read the book. I also would have liked the book better if the Internet, email, and Web sites had been discussed more. But there are many books on those subjects. Therefore, I can't complain too much about the limited discussion of computers.

When you read this book it may feel a little like it was produced on an assembly line. Maybe it was? There are 50 versions of this book sold; the only state I haven't found a copy for is Montana. Content is king, and this book has it. 5 stars!

Reading "Hungry for Home" is a delightful experience - like visiting the Carolinas without paying for airfare and hotels, meeting many new people (the contributors of the recipes), and pleasing the taste buds without putting on the extra weight. I don't live in the Carolinas and I don't even eat shellfish, but this book has me looking for an opportunity to get there asap and experience some of the touching dimensions of this land. Not to mention get a bite of some of these dishes. The book offers a surprising global sampling from Vietnamese to Creole, West Afrian and Jewish. Author Amy Rogers has made a noble effort to address the urgency of hunger as a tragic reality of American life without robbing the reader of the joy she obviously takes in preparing and exploring foods of the region. Her dedication to representing the poignant and often funny voices and traditions of the truly diverse people of the Carolinas is also commendable -- from descendants of slaves to recent Asian immigrants, you'd be surprised! Of course, there are the expected down-home offerings like ham and fried chicken. But with this book, the food is just one-third the story. The other two-thirds come with the imaginative evocation of region and the individuals you meet in essays provided (by contributors) along with their recipes. The reader really feels the social connections offered by sharing selected dishes with others. After reading this book, I feel I have met a whole crowd of Carolinians. Next time I visit my sister in Charlotte, I will feel right at home.

I loved these novellas. Each one could have been published as a "little" book (the size of HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT or ELLEN FOSTER) and most certainly "passed" for a novel.

"Winter" was a gripping tour-de-force of Anna Hand, the late author, on a madcap trip to Europe, trying to gather evidence on her evil sister-in-law. "Olivia DeHaviland Hand" introduces us to Olivia, the long lost daughter of Daniel Hand, and niece to Anna and Helen. I must say I loved "A Summer In Maine" because all of the characters talk, drink, make love, and stir up mischief.

I just hope Ellen Gilchrist writes as fast as she can. She's a poet, she's a philosopher, she's a genie, she's underrated!!! Some of her characters border on alcoholism, but they are so deftly drawn, they come across as flesh and blood; in lesser hands, these women would have come across as melodramatic vixens. Her work is loud and subtle, wild and innocent. I noticed on Amazon that she has another book coming out in 2000.

Anyone interested in avaition or parachuting must read this book.
It inspired me to become a serious skydiving competitor and ultimately become a Navy Frogman .... and later a Navy SEAL.
Hoo-Yah, Ty Zellers

In this work, David Grayson Allen examines how Puritan communities brought the economic and social structures of towns in Old England to towns in New England. Allen details how different English communities rebuilt themselves in America. Allen then briefly outlines what factors ultimately encouraged a degree of homogeneity among these distinctive New England towns.

For even more statistical and personal detail on the migration to New England, see Roger Thompson, Mobility and Migration: East Anglian Founders of New England, 1629-1640. See also David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, which examines the transference of four different regional cultures of England to four different regions of America. Fischer studies Puritan Massachusetts as the seedbed of one such regional American culture. On the Puritans, consult any number of books on the subject by Edmund S. Morgan.

This poignant book by Sebastian Matthews is listed as a memoir of his father, but it could just as easily be found in the biography section. In recounting the life of a brilliant poet and, sometime less than wonderful father, Matthews turned his thoughts inward to give insight into the person he was and eventually struggles to become.

This book often reads like a novel, a story of falling and then climbing to reach solid emotional ground. Anyone who struggles from the baggage left by parents who achieved success professionally but lacked parenting skills, can benefit from the story honestly told here. In understanding divorce, alcoholism, sexual infidelity and intimacy issues, Matthew ends the book on a high note where his career is now on solid ground and his personal life fulfilling. A great non-fiction read, I hope this is a starting point for other books from him outside of his normal poetry venue.

Although the dialect rendering of Black English in these short stories may offend today's delicate politcal sensibilities, the reader should bear in mind that these stories were written in another century for a different audience. Get past that, and you have pure Plantation Tradition - the same tradition that inspired Margaret Mitchell and disgusted William Faulkner, James Branch Cabell, and Ellen Glasgow. The stories are simple, sincere and guaranteed to elicit emotion. Marse Chan is an American Classic, and No Haid Pawn has been likened to a tale of Poe. Get this, read it, and if you don't see life in Ante-bellum Virginia as it was, you can see it as Page thought it should have been.

The books I had ordered arrived with the shortest delay and in good condition. So I'm fully satisfied.
With very best wishes,
Thierry Backeljau

If you love the sea, you're going to love this little book of poetry. The author, born in England, remembers her childhood summers by the seaside at Herne Bay, then rediscovers her love while visiting North Carolina's Outer Banks. Combining free verse and sonnet form, the poetry is uncomplicated and simply beautiful. This would be a perfect gift for anyone who treasures wind, wave and nature's beauty!