Recent Reading: Ackerman, Farley

[rachelmanija]

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses. A set of very brief essays on the five senses (organized by sense) and related matters, ie, the section on taste has essays on chocolate and vanilla. This makes amusing bedside reading, but Ackerman's overheated writing style and precious persona get tiresome if you read more than a few at once. She's constantly getting manicures and leaping into scented baths-- I mean, even more than one would expect given the subject matter. Also, some of the information she presents is wildly oversimplified or even wrong-- not totally off-base, but not quite right. (Sorry, I can't recall examples off-hand.) Not bad, but Sharman apt Russell does this sort of thing with more wit, less swooniness, and much better attention to accuracy.

Walter Farley, The Black Stallion's Blood Bay Colt, in which the Black sires a son, Bonfire, on a harness-racing mare. Horse-knowledgeable readers, how likely is it that the son of a race horse would do harness racing? That's the excuse to include this book in the Black Stallion series, anyway, because it has no other connection. Harness racing, in which horses pull light carriages, is traditionally done at county fairs, but times are changing and it's starting to become a big sport with big money involved. The old harness racer who owns the colt is violently opposed to this, but it's not a clear-cut issue.

This entry is exceptionally well-written and well-characterized, centering around a young man who cares for and races the colt, and his complicated relationships with several father-figures from the harness-racing world. The young man is your basic reader stand-in, but the adults are complex, prickly, sometimes unlikable characters who grow and change and reveal more facets of themselves as the story goes on. One of them is a middle-aged woman who races her own filly against Bonfire in the climax. Let me repeat: there is a middle-aged female jockey! She's sympathetic-with-flaws, like the other adults in the story.

This one has no vampire bats, aliens, apocalypses, or other insane plot elements. It's not that kind of story.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Horse-knowledgeable readers, how likely is it that the son of a race horse would do harness racing?

Un-.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Farley is only writing about the sons and daughters of horses on one level. On another level, he's writing about the sons and daughters of Americans, as he is primarily writing for them, though of course with children in other countries looking on with some awareness of the great American myth of class mobility.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Oh, granted. It's just, as a horsey reader, always kind of entertaining to me how scrupulous Farley is with some details and how fast-and-loose he plays others.