Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal

Love the way horses are so pivotal in her life

only anecdotes. the written is truly boring

Not a bad book but not great either. I've been a horsewoman for 50 years and read many books about horses that deeply touched me or that I had trouble putting down. This book was definitely easy to put down. I found the author's angst about "not fitting in" in the horse world a bit annoying, as, despite her claims to lack of money, she grew on Park Avenue, summered in the Hamptons, and attended Brearley. Too much of the book revolved around moneyed horse people - the woman who imported Marwari horses from India, for example, who keeps her horses on Martha's Vineyard. How many people can afford property on Martha's Vineyard, period, let alone property large enough for horses? This woman prides herself on being a rule-breaker and my first thought was, it's a whole lot easier to be a rule-breaker when you have money to burn. I would have liked some chapters about equally horse-crazy people working hard to make a difference, without a bottomless pit of money to draw upon. The woman who founded/funded Saddle Up and Read while raising her kids and working for $7 and change. The many people who work to rescue/retrain ordinary horses in order to keep them out of the slaughter pipeline. The grooms who work incredibly long days at the horse shows the author competes at. The backstretch workers. As for the horses themselves, her breed descriptions are off. Not every Quarter Horse is a model of equanimity. Nor is every Arab homely and flighty and every draft horse a stoic rock. The book also lacks a sense of continuity, even within chapters.

I loved it. I’m a lifelong horse lover and rider. As a child I had plastic horses instead of dolls, I laboriously built paper mache stables, paddocks and tack for them, posed them in outdoor settings like she did, and built a cross country jumping course in my back yard so I could pretend I was riding a great steeplechase horse. Drew horses incessantly in math class and read Marguerite Henry books. At 12 I finally got a wonderful kind pony; had injuries but kept riding, etc.To this day nothing gets me in the present and out of my self like riding a horse. So she put so many feelings into words.Also identified with the feeling of not belonging for similar reasons.This is not a scientific study of why females love horses; it’s emotional and intuitive. But Nir captured the nobility of all horses, and the mysterious essence of why we love them.Such fun in these times to find a book like this—I could not put the book down and stayed home all day to finish it—a great pleasure.

As a fellow "horse crazy" this book resonated with me deeply. But it's not just a book for horse people! It's Sarah's story, influenced and impacted by family and people and horses.Sarah's writing is engaging and has a powerful feeling of place. I was with her on a beach in the Hamptons, just like I was with her and three Warmbloods in the cargo hold of a 747, just like I was alongside her as she galloped faster and faster on an exotic Marwari stallion.It is clear that horses have the power to change people's lives - that power is shown here, page after page, story after story, life after life. This is a delightful, wonderful, engaging book, and everyone, horse crazy or not, should read it.