Why I Love Dick Francis

Here's the opening of "Straight":

I inherited my brother's life. Inherited his desk, his business, his gadgets, his enemies, his horses and his mistress. I inherited my brother's life, and it nearly killed me.

Here's the opening sentence from "Nerve":

Art Mathews shot himself, loudly and messily, in the center of the parade ring at Dunstable races.

Here's the opening from "Reflex":

Winded and coughing, I lay on one elbow and spat out a mouthful of grass and mud. The horse I'd been riding raised its weight off my ankle, scrambled untidily to its feet and departed at an unfeeling gallop.

Here's the opening sentence from "Risk":

Thursday, March 17, I spent the morning in anxiety, the afternoon in ecstasy, and the evening unconscious.

Nothing like reaching out, grabbing you by the throat, and dragging right into the middle of the story! I have my favorites among his works, but a bad Dick Francis is still better than most reads. The last few works were collaborations with his son Felix. A lot of people criticized them, but I still enjoyed them.

For years now, I have gotten my required dose of his books from audio recordings. Tony Britton is my favorite, but the other readers (Simon Prebble, David Case, Martin Jarvis) aren't bad. Our library system has all of them, either cassette or CD, and I just keep taking them out whenever I need a fix.

If you've never read Dick Francis, any of the above books would be a great place to start. I also especially like "Bonecrack" and "For Kicks".

C. S. Lewis

I have been listening to "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis on audio cassette. As always, he manages to express things with clarity and simplicity. Here is a quote that especially jumped out at me:

"Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man: it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light. Apparently the rats of resentment and vindictiveness are always there in the cellar of my soul."

Ouch!

Re-Living My Childhood - part 3

Spoiler Alert! I might give away too much, so if you haven't read Smoky the Cow Horse by Will James and you want to, be warned!

I remember my father getting this book for me from the library. It is memorable because Dad was not much of a fiction reader. However, he had read this book as a boy and brought it home for me to read. I read it several times as a girl, along with everything else Will James wrote. I loved the illustrations, which were by the author, and I loved the casual way he spoke directly to the reader, as if he were telling a story around a campfire.

This time, I listened to Smoky as a book on tape. It was produced in 1981 and wasn't the greatest audio book I have ever listened to. The audio book industry has come a long way in 29 years. I thought the reader was kind of ordinary. I would love to hear this book read by someone that sounded more like a cowboy - like Clint Eastwood. The recording was 5 tapes long and I almost stopped after the 3rd tape because I remembered the last half of the book being sad. My memory was correct and it made me heartsick to listen to the description of Smoky being abused, but I carried on because I also remembered that there was a happy ending.

It was interesting to read reviews of this book. Some people loved the whole book. Some people liked the second half because there was more "story" happening. Some people were offended by the racism. Some people hated the bad grammar and cowboy slang. I was just interested to observe how much our outlook has changed since this book was written (1927) and took it as a glimpse into a slice of the American West that has slipped into history.

If you google Smoky The Cowhorse, you will find an Australian site that has the entire book on line, including the illustrations. Also, there is major spoiler information on the wikipedia site about this book. www.willjames.com will take you to a site that sells Will Jame's artwork. www.willjames.org will take you to the Will James Society. I was interested to learn "Lone Cowboy" by Will James, which was sub-titled "an autobiography" was actually completely fiction up to his mid-teens and a mixture of fact and fiction after that. (The things you learn from the internet!)

Re-living My Childhood Part 2

Finding one childhood favorite prompted me to try some more books on tape and voila - "The Black Stallion"! I still remember discovering these books. Our neighbors gave me "The Horse Tamer" by Walter Farley for my birthday one year, probably when I was 12 or so, and I loved it. I was a total bookworm (and horse-crazy to boot!) as a kid, so I would lug home armloads of books from the library. Walter Farley could make a horse race last 3 chapters and it was IMPOSSIBLE to put the book down! Once I read one of his books, I was always haunting the library for more. I'm sure that enjoying his books early on paved the way for my love of Dick Francis books as an adult.

I was interested to find that there is a website, www.theblackstallion.com, run by Tim Farley, the author's son. They have used the popularity of the books and movies to promote literacy. They also work with the Arabian Nights dinner show, which features the horse that starred in the Black Stallion movies.

We went to see the Arabian Nights show a while back and it was very entertaining. I particularly remember the Black Stallion because he was absolutely gorgeous and his entire performance was hands off! His trainer used verbal and hand signals while standing at one end of the arena, while this beautiful creature did his moves without halter, saddle, bridle or rider. Very impressive!

Arabian Nights has a blog that features behind the scenes looks at their entertainers and horses. You can find that at www.arabian-nights.com.

Re-living My Childhood

We live about a mile south of Lake Ontario, so we drive the Ontario Parkway frequently. A common site is to look north across a cattail filled pond to see a row of houses, then the lake. It reminded me of a book I remembered called "Gone Away Lake" by Elizabeth Enright. I looked it up on the library's website and discovered that it was available as a book on tape. What a treat! It was interesting to listen to it as an adult and think about why it had appealed to me. I think it was the idea of finding a whole bunch of houses that had been abandoned, still totally filled with their original contents, and exploring them. That treasure hunting instinct... I was also interested to see how things had changed since the book was written in 1957. The main characters in this book would leave the house in the AM and not show back up until dinner and their parents didn't worry about them or call the police. Also, a 12 year old and a 6 year old were put on a train for an all-day journey and it wasn't a big deal. On the other hand, the older folks in the book living off the land and using the natural resources is as current as today's headlines. Fascinating!

There's a sequel called "Return to Gone Away". The library doesn't have it on tape, but maybe I'll get it out in book form and enjoy it soon, as well as some of the author's other works.

Dick Francis

Sadly, one of my very favorite authors, Dick Francis, passed away on February 14 at the age of 89. I have enjoyed his stories for years, especially in audiobook form, and am saddened to think that this era has come to an end. His last few books were collaborations with his son, so perhaps Felix will carry on the tradition. Reports are that most of the books were collaborations with his wife, and many criticized that they were formulaic. True - but I still loved them! The crimes were always ingenious and I always thought it was a good thing that he decided to be a writer instead of a crook.