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Post by Charlotte on Mar 27, 2014 1:14:13 GMT 1
Do you especially like pony books you can relate to personally somehow, or does'nt it matter? This is because of a discussion at the other place (I won't name it again) where almost everyone thinks that relating to books is completely unnecessary/even strange, particularly if they're used as a form of escapism. I've done some of the things mentioned in PBs and do relate personally to some extent, but have always really just liked them for their own sake. It was'nt necessarily about escapism either.
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Post by trixiepony on Mar 27, 2014 1:53:24 GMT 1
I think of pony books as my why off having a pony life whan I didn't have one really. It may off been easier if the kid was at lest a bit like me, but even if not she can be like my friend. Book reading and my drawings went hand in hand I would often draw a sen from a story and put me in it. Of corse I wood be on the winning pony or winning team. Tehe.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2014 8:08:20 GMT 1
Yes that's me too Trixie. I was Ruth in Fly-by-Night standing on the fringe and looking into a pony world that I didn't belong to. Horse owning came to me in adult life. I can't afford a horse these days so I love my pony books for real escapism. I do like to visit locations where books have been based. For instance Eleanor Helme on Exmoor (sorry charlotte I know you hate her books ) and Monica Edwards Punchbowl locations.
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Post by kunuma on Mar 27, 2014 14:47:08 GMT 1
Absolutely - that's the whole point of books - if I can't relate to them in any way I don't reread them as a rule! I think I feel as though the characters are friends rather than thinking of myself in their place, friends that never grow up and get boring and talk about their school fees and soap powder!
I tend to relate more to the Jill and Jinny characters where the family didn't support their horses in any way and they have to do it all themselves - in my case that was so much the case that I couldn't go to uni when I was a teenager as there was no one to look after my pony!Sadly back then you couldn't take them with you like you can now.
Animals have always been the most important thing in my life and still are, so in all honestly my feelings about them are no different that when I was a child, (and if you could see my house, neither is my lifestyle!!)I'ts probably fairly unusual to find a so called grownup with a house full of hamsters and guinea pigs and posters of horses and dogs all over the walls!(Still want to visit Claire??LOL )
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Post by Claire on Mar 27, 2014 15:36:49 GMT 1
I like all sorts of pony books but on the whole I prefer ones I can relate to personally. I prefer books where the heroine (or hero) is not rich and has to scrimp and save for a pony like Ruth or Noel as that was me. I always had ponies on loan or had rides in exchange for looking after other people's horses so those sort of things resonate with me. I dont mind the PT books where kids are fairly well off and have their own ponies but I just dont relate to some of the earlier horsy books where the family had their own grooms, father was a MFH, etc, etc.
Like Rosie I can't have a horse or go riding very often now so they are my connection to the horsy world.
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Post by Charlotte on Mar 28, 2014 1:00:04 GMT 1
I've never really lived in a pony world. Living in London, there was no question of owning a horse even if affordable which it probably would'nt be. I only had a few visits to riding stables/pony treks when on holiday with parents, two years of summer term riding at school. I was more talking about in the past, having done some of the non-pony things in many books, such as swimming in the sea/open water in quite remote British locations or hill-walking.
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Post by Claire on Mar 28, 2014 19:17:36 GMT 1
Do you especially like pony books you can relate to personally somehow, or does'nt it matter? This is because of a discussion at the other place (I won't name it again) where almost everyone thinks that relating to books is completely unnecessary/even strange, particularly if they're used as a form of escapism. Going back to your original post charlotte, I can't understand why people would think relating to a book was strange? What reasons do they give for this? You may have to give me a link to the original discussion so I can have a little look!
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Post by Charlotte on Mar 29, 2014 8:53:06 GMT 1
This is the link, a thread started by me: www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12577I use a different name there partly because of a chalet school character, also I am a kind of male-female transsexual with no physical operation. Mostly use charlotte-type usernames.
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Post by Claire on Mar 29, 2014 14:46:40 GMT 1
Thanks for the link. Must have a look-see...
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Post by nzponywriter on Mar 31, 2014 1:37:38 GMT 1
Yes, very much so. That's half the reason I started writing my own pony books, because none of the ones I was reading really reflected my own experiences. There's not a lot of NZ-based pony book literature, and popular series like Stacey Gregg's don't really reflect 'real life' in NZ (not to my mind anyway, but to be fair I've only read one or two of her books). What has always been more interesting to me than "Will she win at the gymkhana?" is how owning a pony can teach you life lessons that you might not otherwise get. Learning how to be patient, to deal with disappointment, to balance the needs of an animal against the pressing concerns of teenager-dom, discovering that once you learn to work WITH your animal that knowledge can help you deal with people, etc. I don't really enjoy or relate to a lot of the modern American pony books, the Bittersweet Farm series springs to mind, that are about insanely wealthy people with their mansions and private cooks and jetting off to the Florida circuit etc. Just doesn't interest me - I'm more into the scruffy teenage girl riding her pony around the farm But what makes a pony book work for me, one that I will come back to and re-read, is not so much the location or scenarios - it's the characters. If the book brings me into the characters' emotions and allows me to feel them too, then I can relate. For example, Jinny is not a particularly likeable character, but her emotions are so strong and intense that you can't help being swept along with her. Would we be friends in real life? Probably not, I'd find her dramatic mood swings immensely irritating. But I can get inside her head and I feel as though I know what it's like to be her and live her life, even though mine is quite different. (Though I did have a mad AngloArab pony when I was reading the books as a teen, so used to pretend to be Jinny and hoon around the paddocks!) Any book that allows you into the characters' mind will be something relatable, I think. I wrote a character who lost both of her parents, and managed to deal with that by just putting it aside and not thinking too much about it, but when she lost a pony that she had come to love more than anything, the grief of losing him just opened the floodgates to everything else. I don't relate to that on a personal level - my parents are very much alive - but everyone can relate to the experience of grief, and I worked throughout the book to readers become attached to the pony, so that his loss feels as real and heartbreaking to them as it does to Marley, and so the retroactive grief of the loss of her parents feels real too. Does that make sense?
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Post by Claire on Mar 31, 2014 22:34:40 GMT 1
Excellent post. Yes everything you say makes sense. I agree that books that deal with other issues than just winning at gymkhanas and the like are far more interesting and I also dislike the crop of modern books where everyone is wealthy and/or famous, living in mansions, wearing the latest designer clothes and riding 16 hand warm bloods, etc, etc. (I call them celebupony books)
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Post by Charlotte on Aug 30, 2014 18:12:51 GMT 1
I wonder how many children read old or modern pony books now, they're probably often seen as old-fashioned. Don't know if you've had active teenage posters here before, but there are none now.
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Post by trixiepony on Aug 31, 2014 0:01:36 GMT 1
I just don't get the rich pony books ether, but the more just regular pony life books moden or old are the ones I like. I'm reading the newest Karen Wood book Rain Dance loving it, it's a rural or farming story horses in it a little romance.
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