Good Books?

DanceTheTide

Hi. I'm wondering how many of you can remember your favorite horse books you read when growing up? I loved horses from the first I can remember and I loved reading. The first horse book I remember reading was Little Black by Walter Farley. I loved all of the books by C. W. Anderson. The illustrations in those books were incredible. I loved Come On Seabiscuit, Man O'War and as an adult I have enjoyed books on Secretariat and Ruffian's - Burning From the Start. While I a read a lot of other types of books now, I still love a good horse story. Has anyone read anything lately that they want to recommend? It occurs to me that a forum full of horse loving people might be a good place to get a recommendation for a good book. It can be fiction, non-fiction, educational or just fun.

MaryfromMichigan

Oh, I loved reading horse books when I was a little girl! I read ALL The Black Stallion books, also 'Come on Seabiscuit' as well as Black Beauty.

The horse book I read last year was 'Sham, When Great Was Second Best' and it was a very good book, too. I do recommend it.

DanceTheTide

Thank you. I recently read Spirit Horses by Alan S Evans. It was pretty good. There was a little bit of natural horsemanship mixed in with fiction.

SallyT

Favorite horse books as a kid- "Little Vic" was one of my all time favorites (about a race horse & his jockey) as well as any of the Marguerite Henry (Chincoteague) books, Sea Star, Misty, Stormy etc. Recently read "Ruffian-Burning From the Start", too. (I had to read through the breakdown part very quickly!) I just purchased "The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, The Horse That Inspired a Nation" for my kindle, I'll post if it's good. "Following Atticus" was a good read, although it's about a dog and a man, not a horse!

louisecastello

Greatness and Goodness, Barbaro and his Legacy by Alex Brown is a great fairly new book. He has a lot of firsthand accounts and gorgeous photos. I also loved Sham, When Great was Second Best and Ruffian-Burning from the Start. Poor Sham, so beautiful and so great! If only he had come out another year.

EriNC

I currently read Canterwood Crest a horse series set in a boarding school. I loved the Thoroughbred Series, Phantom Stallion, Phantom Stallion Wild horse Island, Kit Ehrman writes a equine mystery series i enjoyed. I recently read a good one called Catch Rider. The other one I read recently set in the town I live in is A Stallion to Die For by Judith Stanton

VA_in_CA

I have three absolutely favorite horse books that are located in a special place in my bedroom so that if we have to evacuate because of an approaching wild fire, I can grab them. It's the trilogy by Mary O'Hara, My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, and Green Grass of Wyoming. The first--which bears no relationship whatsoever to the two terrible movies of the same name--is my most favorite and I have read it more than 30 times, starting when I was 10 years old. The last time, I read it out loud to my daughter and a foster daughter. We were all in tears at the end. I think I mentioned elsewhere on the forum that I searched for The Goose Bar Ranch on my first cross-country trip in 1965. The ranch actually existed and Mary and her husband lived on it during the 30s and raised sheep. I did eventually find the ranch and the house was exactly as described in the books, as were many of the other landmarks. Mary O'Hara wrote a non-fiction book about her life in Wyoming. This told me that the ranch is real and gave me clues to help me find it. Interstate 80 has bypassed a lot of the old US Highway 30, so this made it harder to find the ranch. It was a fun adventure.

Pepper9873

If you like a book that has a bit of mystery, Shadow Horse by Alison Hart is really good.

carolinarkansas

You will love Snowman.....read it earlier this yr...
....
My favorite/first was more a story than a book......about Black Gold....I was just sobbing as I finished it...never forgotten....sixty + yr later

Joanna_TX

An avid reader since I could read (I'm 60+ now), my favs were the Farley and Henry books. King of the Wind was my special favorite.

kurt

i bought a boatload of books from exclusively equine and havent gotten to them all yet but ANY of the books featuring one horse are good..i read spectacular bid first.. the book i just finished was "the kingmaker" how northern dancer founded a dynasty..great read

DanceTheTide

VA_in_CA - I also loved all 3 of Mary O'Hara's books. Have any of you read The Lady by Anne McCaffrey? This is one of my favorites that I re-read from time to time. I also cried when I read Black Gold. My daughter has loaned me several books by Mark Rashid that she really liked - A Good Horse is Never a Bad Color, Considering the Horse and Horses Never Lie. On a whim I recently bought copies of Black Storm by Thomas C. Hinkle and Smokey by Will James so that I could enjoy re-reading these favorites. I can remember being so thrilled as a child to be allowed to borrow my grandfathers copies of these books.

VA_in_CA

This is a great thread. Thanks for starting it DancetheTide. Love your "name."

LyndaK

Black Beauty, Farley's Black Stallion books and a Profiles in Courage book about horse and dog heros.

DanceTheTide

Dance The Tide was the name of my daughter's horse. She loves the song The River by Garth Brooks and especially the line "choose to chance the rapids, dare to dance the tide. "Doug" (his barn name) was a really cool horse that we unfortunately lost to a pasture accident 2 years ago. Before that he was very successful as a Dressage horse with my daughter. His sire was Torey Ridge who was a son of Danzatore. His dam was a very stout working quarter horse. Our horse was intended to be a roping horse but in spite of the bloodlines on his sire's side Doug didn't want to go fast and he definitely didn't want to chase cows. We were fortunate to be able to own him and he was a great match with my daughter. A cool fact is that Torey Ridge was bred and raced by the Whitham's who own Fort Larned. The people we bought our horse from are friends of the Whitham's and they shared photos of our Doug horse at Dressage shows with the Whitham's. Mrs Whitham was supposedly very pleased that one of Torey Ridge's offspring was successful as a sport horse.

VA_in_CA

Thanks for sharing. Great name for a horse.

Delamont

Oh, I loved reading horse books when I was a little girl! I read ALL The Black Stallion books, also 'Come on Seabiscuit' as well as Black Beauty.

The horse book I read last year was 'Sham, When Great Was Second Best' and it was a very good book, too. I do recommend it.

Oh, YEAH! I loved the Walter Farley books, my favorites being Black Minx, and the two about harness racing. I recently went on a quest to attain all those great old books I had as a kid, just a couple short now!

Also loved Misty of Chincoteague, and several whose authors and titles I can't recall, since they were library books, but I can just see the illos!

Great thread.

Valeria_Illinois

As a child, I loved the Black Stallion series and National Velvet; as an adult, I've read all of the Champion Series, but my favorite is: Grit and Valor, the story of Swale by Timothy J. Thompson.

sarinne

King of the Wind was my favorite as a young girl. Boy does that bring back memories.

slewpy

I too as a child loved Black Beauty, My Friend Flicka, and National Velvet. The books I currently have are Barbaro, Seabiscuit (book and movie), Secretariat, and Born to Trot. Born to Trot is a beautiful story about a filly named Rosalind who became the first female to win the KY Derby of harness racing, the Hambletonian.

I also have a video (there's no DVD of it that I know of) called The Jewels of the Triple Crown which has the stories of all 11 TC winners, actual footage, and narrated by the late Jim McKay.

VA_in_CA

That sounds like a great documentary.

DanceTheTide

Its not a book, but there is a great article called "Finding Charley" on the DRF website. You don't need to be a member to view it.
I agree with Delamont about Walter Farley's two books about harness racing being favorites. I still keep an early print edition that I have of the Blood Bay Colt.
I think what I like about the Marguerite Henry books is that most of them tell stories about horses that were real. Maybe all of them do? Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West is a great story about Wild Horse Annie's crusade to stop the slaughter of our wild mustangs. When my daughter was doing a history day project I had her read this book and she ended up basing her project on Annie Bronn aka Wild Horse Annie. You can find newsprint articles about her if you search the internet.
I think the favorite authors that we all keep naming truly must have loved horses to have written the stories that they wrote. I hope that someday we can read books like these about some of our favorite well known horses such as Zenyatta, Smarty Jones, Totillas, Big Ben and Gem Twist to name a few.
I am getting some great suggestions for new books to read as well. Thanks!

lovehorses

Dear Tide,

I can reccomend the following:

My Racing Heart
Secretariat, the making of a champiom
Native Dancer - the grey Ghost
Funny Cide
SeaBiscuit - An American Legend

MaryfromMichigan

Also loved Misty of Chincoteague, and several whose authors and titles I can't recall, since they were library books, but I can just see the illos!

Great thread.

Let me tell you a story about me that involves this book.

I was in grade school and we were going on a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. (kids were taken on long field trips back in the days when I was young). Anyway, we were told to take a bag lunch and I also took the book 'Misty'. When we arrived, I shoved my half-read book into the bag, and the Museum personnel told the class to put all their bags in a certain place in the cafeteria, where they would keep an eye on them while the class went through the museum.

At lunch time, my class arrived back at the cafeteria only to find out that ALL of our lunches had been stolen!!! (this was shocking to me, since I had never been a victim of an actual 'crime' before! LOL!) The museum 'gave' our class hot lunch, but I didn't care about the food... my BOOK WAS GONE!!! And because my family was rather short of cash, I never asked my mom to buy me a replacement 'Misty' book, so I never did get to finish that story, and to this day I remember that book because it was snatched, half-read, away from me. *sobs*

Isn't it funny what sticks in our minds forty years later? I'd bet anything that thief just tossed poor Misty into the nearest trash can.

Celeste_in_TX

As a child I read the Walter Farley books, Marguerite Henry, the wonderful O'Hara trilogy and also loved Smokey the Cow Horse by Will James. After I retired and have more time and began following horse racing more closely I've read quite a few wonderful adult horse books, but I also read several of my daughters' Saddle Club books that were still around here - lol! Some of the good books about racing that I've enjoyed are The Home Run Horse by Glenye Cain Oakford, Horse of a Different Color by Jim Squires, which tells the story of Monarchos, and I've also enjoyed lots of mystery/horseracing books as well. The books by Sasscer Hill - Full Mortality, Racing from Death and The Sea Horse Trade are very good also plus she has some short stories on Amazon also. I won't keep going on and on and on but there are lots of horse books out there to read as well as remember spending time with those beloved books from childhood.

Delamont

Also loved Misty of Chincoteague, and several whose authors and titles I can't recall, since they were library books, but I can just see the illos!

Great thread.

Let me tell you a story about me that involves this book.

I was in grade school and we were going on a field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. (kids were taken on long field trips back in the days when I was young). Anyway, we were told to take a bag lunch and I also took the book 'Misty'. When we arrived, I shoved my half-read book into the bag, and the Museum personnel told the class to put all their bags in a certain place in the cafeteria, where they would keep an eye on them while the class went through the museum.

At lunch time, my class arrived back at the cafeteria only to find out that ALL of our lunches had been stolen!!! (this was shocking to me, since I had never been a victim of an actual 'crime' before! LOL!) The museum 'gave' our class hot lunch, but I didn't care about the food... my BOOK WAS GONE!!! And because my family was rather short of cash, I never asked my mom to buy me a replacement 'Misty' book, so I never did get to finish that story, and to this day I remember that book because it was snatched, half-read, away from me. *sobs*

Isn't it funny what sticks in our minds forty years later? I'd bet anything that thief just tossed poor Misty into the nearest trash can.

How awful!

I should also mention M. Henry's Justin Morgan Had A Horse. And I'm enjoying all the book recommendations.