What are your favorite horse books? There's gotta be millions out there, so it should be interesting to see what everyone's been reading...
For riding... I've always been fond of Sally Swift's Centered Riding-- she has great word pictures to help improve your position, really interesting stories about her students and teachers and horses, and some very useful exercises to try!
My mum's a librarian, and she snuck me a copy of Donna Snyder-Smith's The All-Around Horse and Rider before they were supposed to shelve it-- I love it! It's got a lot of the regular basics of riding, choosing a vet, RI, farrier, etc... but in the back, there's a few chapters about choosing a discipline (it's got profiles of a bunch of different kinds of competitions, with information about the best type of horse to use, a summary of the sport, and a "Choose it if you like..." It also lists the governing organizations, along with magazines with coverage, and books with more information for each discipline-- very handy)! I also love the chapter titled "Six Fun Things to do with The Same Horse"
Fiction... Marguerite Henry wrote a book about Godolphin Arabian called "King of the Wind"-- it's so sweet and the illustrations are beautiful. It was definitely my favorite when I was small, and I still read it for the nosalgia every once in a while!
Horse encyclopedia... My mother found a very large, huge, mastadonic horse encyclopedia called The Ultimate Book of the Horse and Rider-- it's published by Barnes & Noble Books, and written by Judith Draper, Debby Sly, and Sarah Muir. Excellent photographs, breed descriptions, as well as a massive section about the basics of riding, horse selection, health care, and horse management. Oh! And it's got a great section about tack-- it explains the uses and applications (as well as the pros and cons) of almost every martingale, noseband, bit, saddle, etc.
--Stille
For riding... I've always been fond of Sally Swift's Centered Riding-- she has great word pictures to help improve your position, really interesting stories about her students and teachers and horses, and some very useful exercises to try!
My mum's a librarian, and she snuck me a copy of Donna Snyder-Smith's The All-Around Horse and Rider before they were supposed to shelve it-- I love it! It's got a lot of the regular basics of riding, choosing a vet, RI, farrier, etc... but in the back, there's a few chapters about choosing a discipline (it's got profiles of a bunch of different kinds of competitions, with information about the best type of horse to use, a summary of the sport, and a "Choose it if you like..." It also lists the governing organizations, along with magazines with coverage, and books with more information for each discipline-- very handy)! I also love the chapter titled "Six Fun Things to do with The Same Horse"
Fiction... Marguerite Henry wrote a book about Godolphin Arabian called "King of the Wind"-- it's so sweet and the illustrations are beautiful. It was definitely my favorite when I was small, and I still read it for the nosalgia every once in a while!
Horse encyclopedia... My mother found a very large, huge, mastadonic horse encyclopedia called The Ultimate Book of the Horse and Rider-- it's published by Barnes & Noble Books, and written by Judith Draper, Debby Sly, and Sarah Muir. Excellent photographs, breed descriptions, as well as a massive section about the basics of riding, horse selection, health care, and horse management. Oh! And it's got a great section about tack-- it explains the uses and applications (as well as the pros and cons) of almost every martingale, noseband, bit, saddle, etc.
--Stille
