oh! I haven't thought about Marguerite Henry in years. She so fed my pre-teen horse love.

All the pre-KY Derby stuff on ABC this past few weeks has put her in my head. One of my favorite kids books is Born to Run, her book on harness racing. And Jeopardy just had a question on which horse breed was named after an American colonial farmer (or whatever he did), and I blurted out, "Justin Morgan Had a Horse!" Oh, and on my just-returned-from vacation, my mom and I were driving from NJ to FL, and in looking over the road atlas for VA, I noticed Chincoteague and Assateague on the coast.

We drove through Assateague! Ponies stuck their heads in our windows. The mosqitoes were as big as helicopters, though.

We've been watching Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and last week he was at the Spanish Riding School and I prattled on about levades, courbettes and caprioles to my only mildly interested roommate.

I credit Ms. Henry (and other horse-related pre-teen books I read then) with the fact that, the first time I was ever on a horse by myself when our family did a horse-trek in Arkansas when I was around 10, I had perfect posture and knew exactly how to keep my heels down and hold the reins. I had the most control of my mount out of my entire (all older) family.

(BTW, love your tagline, Laga! I was just commenting to MFNLaw about the Wilde line on the Water Tower when I gave her a driving tour of the city last month.)

I found this gorgous picture.

I had perfect posture and knew exactly how to keep my heels down

I still forget to keep my heels down. I blame my english style background and the fact that I'm taking western lessons now.

love your tagline, Laga!

Why thank-you. I always knew he'd called it a castellated monstrosity but I hadn't seen the whole quote until I went looking for the full context of Nelson Algren's line about loving Chicago is like loving a woman with a broken nose. (I never did find the whole Algren piece) Wilde goes on about how much he hates Chicago but I couldn't fit it all in my tagline.

So I'm reading What Looks Like Crazy On an Ordinary Day.

I adore this book. It has officially rocketed to the top of my favorite books ever. Plus, it takes place in Michigan which is always awesome and it takes place in Idlewild, which the Michigan Historical Society (or some such group) is working on restoring back to it's glory days and turning it back into a resort town. My parents cottage is about 40 miles or so away.

But, I LOVE Ava. She is just magnificent.

Swordfishtrombones, reviewed: [link]

I just finished Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, which is about international health physician Paul Farmer, who runs (among other things) a clinic in Haiti.

So inspirational. Also rather guilt-inducing. Marvelously written. And I suspect my brother knows this guy...

Awesome review, Hec! (And thanks for linking, Corwood.)

I broke into such a smile on the opening line:

For better or worse, the entries in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series have a reputation of being serious, analytical, and largely humorless studies of various classic albums.

'cause you know just where that's going.

Nice job, Hec!

He's speaking here next week. My book club read the book - inspirational, but also, the dude is a little nuts. I mean, I think it's irresponsible to marry and have a child if you live like that.