A confounding account of the author’s life in horse racing.
In this hybrid work of spiritualism, memoir, and nonfiction, debut author Ragsdale takes the reader through his history with the sport of horse racing, from his younger years sneaking away from jobs for a few hours at the track to his later ownership of multiple thoroughbreds.
Most of Ragsdale’s horses proved to cost more money than they ever made, though one, the eponymous Thar She Blows, ended up being quite profitable after a high initial investment in medical bills. Between Ragsdale’s accounts of various horses and tracks, he describes the various breeds of horses that are raced (quarter horses, thoroughbreds), the winnings breakdown for various states, and why donkeys make the best companion animals. He also begins and ends each chapter (or “race,” as he calls them) with equine-related Bible passages. Ragsdale’s career as an owner came to an end after his “female racing companion,” Barbara, injured herself in a paddock and they decided to sell their final horse. Ragsdale’s love of horses certainly comes across, and he seasons his memoir with wry humor: “In the beginning was the WORD. Then our creator made a creative man and woman and then came the horse. Our Creator always goes first class and provided man and woman with a means of transportation. Sometimes a donkey.” On the whole, however, his writing is difficult to read; it leaps from topic to topic with little logical organization. There is no overarching narrative in the book (or even smaller narratives within the chapters). The reader gets little sense of what Ragsdale learned from his decades around horse racing or what wisdom he wishes to impart. The religiosity within the text may alienate secular readers, but it’s never dogmatic: Bible passages were seemingly chosen because they featured the word “horse.” It’s difficult to imagine that the audience for this book would extend beyond the horse racing community in the Louisiana/East Texas area.
A confounding account of the author’s life in horse racing.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5049-7457-8
Page Count: 108
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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