Dusty Reads #12

 

Dusty Reads is a weekly meme hosted by Giselle at Xpresso Reads where we spotlight a book sitting in our TBR pile. My TBR breeds when I'm not looking. I add to it, sure, but even so, I come across books and I don't recall buying them. My goodreads TBR shelf is now at 551. O_o And yet, I keep buying and borrowing books. And occasionally, winning them. :) Happily, the quantity of incoming books has slowed down some and I've actually gotten some of those dusty books read. If I could just stop adding books, my TBR pile might get below 500 again. Hey, I can dream! :D

 Book Blurb:

Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes:

Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon. 

Author Laura Hillenbrand brilliantly re-creates a universal underdog story, one that proves life is a horse race.

This month's Dusty Read is a non-fiction book, "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand. It was made into a movie a few years ago, which I saw with a friend. I was a horse-mad girl growing up; I read Margaret Henry, Walter Farley, etc., and had (still have actually) an extensive Breyer model horse collection, including a model of Seabiscuit. I ordered the book from paperbackswap.com last year and it's been sitting in a pile on my bedroom floor, collecting dust. Since I expect to be laid up after my lung surgery (though the doctor swears most people go back to work the next day), I will probably read it then, while I'm curled up on the couch.