Your favorite horsey books?

I am really enjoying Linda Shantz and her Good Things series. Fourth book is coming out soon and her books kind of make me think of Dick Francis sitting down and writing with Maeve Binchy.

My all time fav horse book is The Five Circles by Barbara May. Its taken in the horses perspective of the Canadian Eventing Team back in the 50’s. I love it as its a true story and written at all of the places I know and have shown at (Cup classes at the Royal Winter Fair, horse was born at a nearby town where I live, I know of all the team riders etc). Its so neat since its written all in Cilroy’s (the horse) perspective on how he started as a foal and was sold on and trained to be on the team. Picture of the whole team is on the back cover as well :slight_smile:

I have not read this one, at least not recently, but I just noticed that Lucinda’s (then Prior-Palmer, now Green) book “Up, Up And Away: The Biography Of Be Fair” is available in paperback

1 Like

Another vote for “Seabiscuit” by Laura Hillenbrand.
And “Crazy Good” by Charles Leerhsen - about Dan Patch.
For fiction I did enjoy the foxhunting books by Rita Mae Brown. They made me want to take up foxhunting but, you know, without all the murders… :wink:

Fiction:
The dressage chronicles by Karen McGoldrick are very good and quite accurate.
I love horsey YA fiction, and have many favorites:
Monday Horses by Jean Slaughter Doty (her Summer Pony and Winter Pony are also excellent)
Tic Tac (Leslie Baird)
The Sunbonnet series

Non Fiction:
Winning (Mullen White? White Mullen?
Ride with your Mind - Mary Wanless

I collect copies of Slaughter Doty books and I’ve got those two by Peyton, too! I love getting retired library books with the old stamps and some have the pocket for the library card.

A Horse Like Mr. Ragman is a great book in a similar vein.

2 Likes

Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon.
Barn Blind, Jane Smiley

Every few years I reread all my Dick Francis books. The new ones by his son are terrible; the early ones are my favorite.

I do not think anyone has mentioned “The Lady” by Anne McCaffrey. A novel all about horses in Ireland.

1 Like

An amazing number of these (and lots more horse books) are available for borrowing from archive.org.

1 Like

Thank you so much for recommending Traveller! I have had it on my kindle for years but was not aware of the author connection to Watership Down. I loved that book and now I’ve almost finished Traveller. Fantastic book and recommendation.

1 Like

I like the quotes from that book “I’ll lose 5 lbs as soon as I get Jaime shod” and “His fur is such a pretty gold color.”

What’s the best way of searching on this site? I typed in Monday Horses in the Wayback Machine and a number of unrelated books came up.

To search archive.org (which can be tricky):

Do not search the Wayback Machine.

Choose the book icon above that.
If you know the book title, put it in quotes. Make sure you have the title correct, though.

If the title has an unusual word, you can search just on that word, then narrow it down by Topics & Subjects. Or do the same if the author has an unusual name.

Example: If I’m looking for Florian the Lipizzaner by Felix Salten, I get no hits when I search for “Florian the Lippizaner.”
Searching for just Florian gives me 1063 results
Applying a topic filter for Animals gives me only 12 results, but they’re wrong. And horses is not one of the top filter choices.
Searching for Salten gives me 65 results. And I can then filter for horses, which is one of the first page choices.
Result: Florian: the emperor’s stallion, which I can log in and borrow for an hour at a time.

So many excellent suggestions, I have a HUGE list now and can’t wait to get started. Already am diving into My Horses, My Teachers and am giddy to read the rest.

As a little horse crazy girl, I devoured the Pony Pal books – if anyone knows any young readers. :stuck_out_tongue:

Riding with Reagan by John Barletta. It is NOT political at all! Barletta was the Secret Service agent in charge of Reagan’s “equestrian protection.” The book is a lovely, fun read.

1 Like

Loved that book, and yes, it isn’t political. Lots of horsey stuff. The author was deliberately picked as an agent who could ride so he could keep up with Reagan on trail rides.

One of my favorite stories from it. Reagan was out at his ranch on a vacation. A blue heron had discovered his goldfish pond and was eating his goldfish, so Reagan, purely in property owner mode, decided to put the fear of the Lord into the heron and scare him away from the ranch. So the agent met Reagan as he exited the house the next morning, and they were walking toward the barn. Then without warning, Reagan pulled out a gun and started firing at (but deliberately missing) the heron. Of course, all the security all around the ranch promptly went nuts. Reagan was quite apologetic at the commotion he caused and agreed to notify his agents before he decided to shoot anything next time.

Not quite horse-related, but I found one I remembered from childhood recently and popped a few dollars, very cheap, to reorder it. It has arrived, and it’s a nice read, just as I remembered. Good specimen of how children’s books used to be written in the 60s. It’s called Peter’s Moose, and it’s about a forest ranger’s son who discovers an orphaned moose calf at death’s door. The ranger lets him take it home only because he thinks there’s no way it’s going to live. Well, it does live, and all sorts of problems ensue. Peter is determined that this is an awesome pet. Good coming-of-age tale. Of course, by the end, the moose goes back to the wild, where he belongs, but he doesn’t forget his friend. Peter even rides him several times.

Jimmy Woffords new book “Still Horse Crazy after all these Years” is amazing. I finished it in 2 days. Fantastic read, Its going to get passed around our barn now

2 Likes

Yes, It is so interesting, so many of us know these people and of them if not in person.
He does make eventing seem easy peasy, just a walk in the park.
Guess for someone like him it was that looking back maybe, but ugh, the team it requires and immense work from all, that can’t ever be described over and over enough.
He does give credit to everyone time and again, eventing is a real close knit family.
Lots of equestrian history there and has interesting pictures.

1 Like

Hopefully not too spammy, but the latest installment of my (now) eight-book Fortune’s Fool equestrian fiction series just dropped:

For those still catching up, the seventh book is on sale for only .99 in the US and UK Kindle stores:

7 Likes

I loved Anna Blake’s books: Stable Relations, Barn Barn Dance, Relaxed and Forward etc.

Also all of Mark Rashid’s books are really good: both educational and entertaining.

Unusual but really good: The scorpio races by Maggie Stiefvater

I love, love all of K.M. Peyton’s horsey books.

Seabiscuit is a good one.

The $700 Pony (funny)

1 Like