Starting

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting and Running a Winery
$18.95
Okay, first off, ignore the silly title. There are good "Complete Idiot's" and "Dummies" books and not so good ones. This is a good one. The best book, and certainly the most complete book, I've seen on the business side of starting a winery. I'd recommend other books on wine making (including the excellent The Way to Make Wine: How to Craft Superb Table Wines at Home which bridges the home winemaking and small winery divide) but if you're serious about a winery, going to a couple of books is hardly a major problem.

The book is well-written, clear, and informative. Alas, my recommendation would carry more weight if I've opened a winery and made a profit, but so far this book falls into the informational category for me.

The Wall Street Journal. Guide to Starting Your Financial Life
$14.95
This book was a good overview of learning about finances and starting your financial life. The book was easy to comprehend and a quick read. I recommend it to anyone interested in delving more into the world of finance.

RSB

Starting & Building a Nonprofit: A Practical Guide
$29.99
The book was purchased through my account for a co-worker. She had the library's book, so when I showed her the price, she wanted her own. She gives the book glowing reviews and says it is wonderful and easy to understand.

Starting Out in the Evening
$14.00
My reaction to this novel was very unusual for me: when I finished the last page, I immediately turned back to the beginning and started again. I simply did not want to leave the company of these characters and of this author. So many of the author's ideas resonated with me: the nature of time, the complexity of relationships, our expectations of ourselves and how they stack up against what we are able to accomplish, the measure of a life. I recently gave up on reading a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about 3/4 of the way through--with reluctance not to have soldiered on to the end but also with great relief that the ordeal was over. I was thinking of this as I read some of the poorer reviews of this novel. Those folks would probably rather have read the book I abandoned. Not every novel will speak to every person, naturally. But if you are attracted to a quiet, graceful portrait of the small world of an elderly New York writer and the diverse characters who fill his life at the end of his life, please give this book a try. The daughter of the main character describes him as he's reading a book in a busy airport: "He was somewhere far away, taking a walk with Henry James." I'm glad I took a walk with Brian Morton. It was delightful.