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Bed and Breakfast at Prospect Hill
A Century-Old Victorian Inn in the Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina
Book Reviews

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Here's how we do this
Book reviews will consist of two elements - a one paragraph narrative review of the work, and a numerical rating from 1 to 10.  A narrative review may be written by any previous guest at Prospect Hill (and we've had many book worms as guests).  Narrative reviews should be kept to 300 to 500 words maximum.  Each narrative review must be accompanied by a numerical rating from 1 (one of the worst books I've ever read) to 10 (one of the best books I've ever read).   Narratives and numerical ratings should be sent to me by e-mail, and must include the title and Author of the book, Publisher and date of publication, and the full name and town of residence of the person submitting the review,  The reviews published to the web site will include the first name only of the reviewer and city of residence.

We'll accept reviews on any book, regardless of publishing date, however the reviewer must have read the book within the six months prior to writing the review.

The books which I am currently reading or are under my desk waiting, are:
   
   Steve Jobs  by Walter Isaacson  The biography of the founder of Apple Computer Company.
   Who Stole The American Dream  by Hedrich Smith.  An analysis of the 50 years of change in the American way of life

Anyone checking the list below might be able to deduce what I like to read.  Note the absence of Romance, Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Family trilogies.  So given that, if you have any good suggestions . . . let me know!

Index of Reviews
Click on the name of the book below to read the review.
You might think that most of the books I read score pretty high on my scale of 10, well, not true!  It so happens that when I read a book which bores me, which is poorly written or which I just don't like, (and there are some), I don't bother to finish it and don't write a review.  So this listing consequently reflects for the most part, books which I have liked.

FICTION
Click on the title to read the review

NON FICTION
Click on the title to read the review

The Black House by Peter May     **********

March Violets by Philip Kerr      **********

Hitler's Peace by Philip Kerr    **********

Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr      **********

The Help by Kathryn Stockett     **********

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay     **********

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain    **********

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett  **********

American Assassin by Vince Flynn   **********

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson  **********

Protect and Defend  by Vince Flynn    **********

The Great Gatsby  by F. Scott Fitzgerald 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society  by Mary Ann Shaffer **********

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo  by Stieg Larsson   **********

Wolf Hall  by Hillary Mantel    **********

Water For Elephants  by Sara Gruen    **********

The Spies of Warsaw  by Alan Furst    **********

The Reluctant Fundamentalist  by Mohsin Hamid   **********

A Thousand Splendid Suns  by Khaled Hosseini    **********

Suite Française  by Irène Némirovsky     **********

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes   **********

The Lincoln lawyer  by Michael Connelly    **********

One Hundred Years of Solitude  by Gabriel García Márquez  **********

War Trash  by Ha Jin   **********

The Reader  by Bernhard Schlink   **********

The News From Paraguay by Lily Tuck   **********

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown    **********

Bel Canto  by Ann Patchett  **********

The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency byAlexander McCall Smith   **********

The Birth Of Venus  by Sarah Dunant   **********

Paranoia by Joseph Finder  **********

The da Vinci Code  by Dan Brown   **********

Our Lady Of The Forest  by David Guterson  **********

The Kite Runner  by Khaled Hosseini  **********

Atonement   by Ian McEwan  **********

The Corrections    by Jonathan Franzen    **********

The Secret Life of Bees  by Sue Monk Kidd    **********

Red Rabbit  by Tom Clancy   **********

The Lovely Bones  by Alice Sebold    **********

A Thousand Acres  by Jane Smiley   **********

Girl With a Pearl Earring  by Tracy Chevalier  **********

A Confederacy of Dunces  by John Kennedy Toole  **********

The Testament  by John Grisham **********

The Blind Assassin  by Margaret Atwood    **********

The Human Stain  by Philip Roth  **********

Close Range  by Annie Proulx   **********

In The Fall   by Jeffrey Lent   **********

The Shipping News  by E. Annie Proulx   **********

Corelli's Mandolin  by   Louis de Bernières   **********

Ragtime
  by E.L. Doctorow  **********

The Stone Diaries by  Carol Shields  **********

The Eye of the Needle  by  Ken Follett   **********

Larry's Party  by   Carol Shields   **********

Cold Mountain  by   Charles Frazier   **********

The Poisonwood Bible   by Barbara Kingsolver   **********

The House of Spirits   by  Isabel Allende   **********

Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas   by  James Patterson   **********

Prodigal Summer   by Barbara Kingsolver  **********

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

Agent Garbo, by Stephan Talty      **********

The Party is Over by Mike Lofgren    **********

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi,     **********

In the Shadows of War  by Thomas Childers    **********

Havana Nocturne, by T.J. English  William Morrow 2007    **********

Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes Doubleday 2011      **********

Citizens of London by Lynne Olson  **********

And The Show Went On by Alan Riding     **********

Christine, A search for Christine Granville  by Madeleine Masson    **********

Every Man in This Village is a Liar by Megan K. Stack    **********

In The Garden of The Beasts by Erik Larson  **********

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand  **********

And the Dead Shall Rise by Steve Oney  **********

OPJB by Christopher Creighton  **********

The Good Man of Nanking  by John Rabe    **********

The Rape of Nanking  by Iris Chang    **********

The Last Campaign  by Thurston Clarke    **********

Mahler  by Kurt Blaukopf & Herta Blaukopf   **********

Persian Mirrors by Elaine Sciolino    **********

The Dark Side by Jane Mayer   **********

The Death of Dylan Thomas  by Nashold M.D. & Tremlett  **********

Churchill, Hitler & the Unnecessary War  by Patrick Buchanan **********

The Forger  by Cioma Schönhaus   **********

Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk    **********

The Somme  by Peter Hart   **********

Clapton, The Autobiography by Eric Clapton  **********

Legacy Of Ashes  by Tim Weiner  **********

Troublesome Young Men  by Lynne Olson    **********

Too Close to the Sun  by Sara Wheeler    **********

Gate of the Sun  by Elias Khoury   **********

A Soldier's Story  by General Omar N. Bradley    **********

The GOD Delusion  by Richard Dawkins **********

Murder in Amsterdam  by Ian Buruma     **********

Fiasco by Thomas E. Ricks    **********

Dowding & The Headquarters Fighter Command  by Peter Flint  **********

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick  **********

Ten Years at The Court of St. James  by Baron von Eckardstein   **********

Guns, Germs and Steel  by Jared Diamond   **********

John Adams by David McCullough  **********

Postwar, a History of Europe since 1945  by Tony Judt  **********

Shostakovich and Stalin  by Solomon Volkov   **********

The Lost Painting  by Jonathan Harr  **********

The City Of Falling Angels  by John Berendt  **********

Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis  **********

The World is Flat  by Thomas L. Friedman  **********

His Excellency, George Washington  by Joseph J.  Ellis    **********

The United States of Europe  by T.R. Reid  **********

The Tipping Point  by Malcolm Gladwell  **********

The Battle of Alamein  by John Bierman and Colin Smith  **********

Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour  by Joseph Persico  **********

News Of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Màrquez  **********

The Battle Of Hurtgen Forest  by Charles Whiting  *********

A Man Called Intrepid by William Stevenson  *********

The Bushes,  by Peter & Rochelle Schweizer  **********

Plan Of Attack  by Bob Woodward    **********

Bush's Brain  by James Moore & Wayne Slater   **********

American Dynasty  by Kevin Phillips  **********

Churchill, A Biography  by Roy Jenkins  *********

Franklin and Winston  by Jon Meacham  **********

Flyboys  by James Bradley  **********

Masterminds of Terror  by Yosri Fouda and Nick Fielding  **********

War Talk  by Arundhati Roy  **********

The Skeptic, A Life of H. L. Mencken  by Terry Teachout  **********

The First World War   by John Keegan  *********

Some Desperate Glory  by Edwin Campion Vaughn **********

Gods and Generals  by Jeff Shaara *********

The Conquerors  by Michael Beschloss  **********

Longitudes and Attitudes   by Thomas L. Friedman   *********

The Englishman's Daughter    by Ben MacIntyre  **********

Cider With Rosie  by Laurie Lee **********

Jack, Straight from the Gut  by Jack Welch  **********

In Afghanistan by Jere Van Dyk **********

The Fatal Shore   by  Robert Hughes  **********

Dutch   by  Edmund Morris  **********

Tuesdays With Morrie   by  Mitch Albom  **********

Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil   by  John Berendt  **********

The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt    by  Edmund Morris  **********

Band Of Brothers  by   Stephen Ambrose  **********

The Killer Angels  by   Michael Shaara  **********
 

 


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 Last modified: December 12, 2012 .