Best Horse Stories

by John Francome (Introduction)

Hard cover book with dust cover as seen in vg condition (tn). We ship worldwide from San Francisco bay area.

Genres: Horses, Animals

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Ex-National Hunt Champion Jockey John Francome is a broadcaster on racing for Channel 4. He lives in Berkshire.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Fra...

Reviews

[Leeanne G · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

I think most of the short stories in this book are not short stories at all, but rather chapters out of actual horse novels. I know for certain the short stories about Black Beauty and National Velvet are right out of the novels because I've read both books and remembered those scenes. Even the story snippets that I know so well were hard to follow because they felt out of context. In each 'short story' it was hard to keep track of who was who and what was going on because there wasn't much of an introduction to the characters. The old English writing didn't help either. Even so, I truly enjoyed a few of the stories, so this wasn't a complete waste of time.

My favourite story was The Maltese Cat. It was about horses playing polo - a game I know almost nothing about - and even most of the polo terms and strategies the horses were discussing went completely over my head, it was still fun, and I got completely caught up in the excitement of the game! I also think I learned a little bit about how polo works too.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had a variety of house stories the best two were the first and the last. Some were almost unreadable in cockney or something English. Good little book overall

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although many of the stories in this book were entertaining, I found a lot of them to be incomprehensible to me. I think because of the year of the publishing of these stories, the way they are written are in a different version of the english language. I didn't really understand at all what the stories were trying to say. Being short stories, at least by the end you basically understood the meaning of the stories. If you have a well defined vocabulary and understanding of the english literature, and you enjoy horses, this is the book for you!

[Clemma Waddell · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful collection of short stories! I don't recall reading this as a child, with the text I might have put it down and decided it was too difficult. My favourites would have to be A Happy Ending (from Black Beauty, Lost on the Moors, An Expensive Operation (James Herriot, always!),The Malted Cat (polo ponies in India, Phillipa's Fox Hunt (hilarious), and Stranger in the Wild. Highly recommend this for "a winter's afternoon in front of the fire".