SUMMER READING CHALLENGE 2023 - OFFICIAL THREAD - COMPLETED

[darkhorse]

Can I have a smily please for Three Jays go to Town. I agree with Claire that this is the best one in the series which I have read so far. It benefits from concentrating mainly on horsey matters, which is obviously the author's specialist subject!

[Claire]

Glad you enjoyed it Darkhorse.

Ive read about half of the Island of Lost Horses but and am enjoying it but have had to leave it due to travelling across to Spain for a few days and having no room in my luggage (travelling light). While im here I will still be able to add smilies but not rosettes sorry.

[haff y fan]

I don't know why I make a list as I never stick to it 😂 

I've read the 2nd and 3rd and started no. 4 in the eventing books now, and also read the new Ravensbay title. Really enjoying the eventing books, obviously, the Ravensbay title has sadly been my least favourite in this lovely series so far. 

[Claire]

Haha Haffy I always start off quick and then grind to a halt...

Sorry folk haven’t been around a few days with internet problems while travelling. Normal service should resume tomorrow.

[Claire]

Big smiley for Island of Lost Horses by Stacey Gregg. I liked her early Pony Club secrets books but I thought they got a bit too obsessed with big events and winning instead of the more simple pleasures of children having fun with ponies - so this was the first of her books I've read in a while. Glad I did as it went back to the basics of a girl-horse relationship. It's a good mixture of a modern day adventure and a historical tale entwined, plus a partly fictional re-creation of how the very rare Abaco Barb breed was formed. I enjoyed the historical parts best - especially as they were set in Spain (having travelled there a lot and lived there a while). The setting was the Spain of Isabella and Ferdinand/Spanish Inquisition/Colombus, etc and it touched on all these elements with varying historical accuracy and plenty of artistic licence - it still made for an exciting adventure and some educational element and the bond between Felipa and her horse was touching. The modern story was pretty good too.

I know it's going to be really hard this Challenge to pick a star read as every one so far has been good and I still have The Swallow Tale by K M Peyton to go!

[darkhorse]

The Island of Lost Horses sounds interesting.

Can I have a smiley for The Pony Plot, a nice easy read. Only one more to go for me. I might actually finish the challenge this year.

[susanb]

Apologies for being so long absent...I got Covid (again ) and it basically ATE my August!

I did some reading this past weekend, after a month of nothing but work and sleep: Handy of the Triple-S scrapes a smiley, it starts off well, with nice details on training the new collie pup, detours into a stupid dog theft plot (with Basque shepherd taking the usual place of gypsies....bleh), and ends with a bit of what we'll call homage to Lad by Alfred Terhune, at sheep trials instead of obedience.

I've begun Meet Stroller, but I have a feeling this is going to be a year I don't make the full 10 books

[susanb]

On the Three Jays, completely agree its one of the better of the series, in that it has SO much more horsey detail, and lots of it in Smythe's area of expertise, which makes it all the more fun. I also enjoyed the adventure element A couple of nits to pick though:

They actually decided to have a kid with a suspected broken ankle compete instead of letting the overweight girl ride? What the hell?

The characters of the calm boy and chubby girl are basically cardboard cutouts, there to fill the five person team, which is an opportunity missed. The Jays barely interact with them at all.

The kids being in trouble at school is a recurring theme....they're always blamed for something, proved innocent, then in the next book its the same again. Reminded me a bit of the Susan books by Jane Shaw, which I had to stop reading as they just seemed like emotional child abuse, the way Susan and her cousins were continually blamed for everything. The Three Jays troubles bother me less, as Pat is always on their side, which makes all the difference. Still......

For all the nits, I did enjoy it, and it's earned a place on my (overcrowded) shelves

[Claire]

Sorry to hear you haven't been well Susan. I totally agree with your points on the Three Jays book about Penny(weight) not competing instead of Jane and her being a cardboard cut-out. However Penny does re-appear in a couple of later book where her character is developed further, she loses weight and has a chance to ride properly. (Over the Border and Lend a Hand)

I don't think I will finish my challenge this year either as I still have a few to go. Also just bought a new house which needs a lot of work doing to it so not a much time to read as I would like.

[susanb]

ahhh....I remember the Penny character now from the later books (I managed to read the whole series out of order ), good that she got to develop.

And that's so exciting....a new house!! Congratulations....hope there's lots of room for all your books

[Claire]

Thanks Susan Yes plenty big enough for lots of books, although not sure how long I'll be there, depending on whether I decide to move back to Spain some time in the future.

Another smiley for The Swallow Tale. Read it a good while back so couldn't remember much about it. I don't think I ever read the full trilogy. I do have the full trilogy put down on my challenge list, but in the interest of trying to finish the other books on my list , I'll leave books 2 and 3 for later.

Back to Swallow. As always. with the author's books, this is a very easy read, very well-written, with three dimensional characters and a very sympathetic main character. Perhaps, not the most original of her books, as it's on very similar lines to Fly by Night, with our total beginner heroine hankering after a beautiful but unmanageable pony which she can't control. She also hero-worships Charlie, a young horsy natural, just as Ruth does with Peter. Charlie also has, like Peter, a domineering father. The main differences are that Rowan has a rich, unsympathetic father and Charlie has a lot of siblings.

[darkhorse]

Congrats on your new home Claire.

I've just started Skipper. It looks quite short so I don't think it will take me long to read it.

[Claire]

Hi all, just a quick message - as we all appear to have a few books left to finish off the challenge, I am extending the end date until 30TH SEPTEMBER

[susanb]

Yay!!! Thank you so much

I read a bit more of Meet Stroller over the weekend, but am finding it a bit of a dry slog, even though it's not long at all. I may set it aside and grab one of my other books to see if I can get on a roll again

[darkhorse]

Smiley please for Skipper the Dog From the Sea. It's a nice undemanding story with a likeable family of characters who are not as annoying Jackie and Babs can sometimes be. It does have a bit of a pony element also, but still primarily a dog story. I believe I have actually finished the challenge for once!

[Claire]

Congrats Darkhorse, I think you are the first to complete the challenge this year!

Yes, I quite like the Skipper and Taff dog books JMB wrote, also the cat ones, although they are very hard to find.

I'm kind of stuck in Ponies and Parachutes. I'll make an effort and try and finish it in the next couple of days.

[Claire]

Have to give a neutral for Ponies and Parachutes. It started OK, although had the slightly cliched obnoxious relative coming to stay who turns out to be OK. But the story then gets a bit bogged down with a rather dull (and definitely cliched) robbery sub-plot. There is some more horsy stuff later on but by then I had lost interest. why the author couldn't have just stuck with the parachute sub-plot (which was in fact quite interesting) I don't know. Adding the robbery into the mix only made things confusing and added nothing of value to the story. I much preferred the first book in the series (Ponies in the Heather).

EDIT - just to add, even though the official end date has passed, please feel free to add comments/ratings for a few more days - I'll then ask folk for their star reads and wind up the challenge so that we can think about doing a Halloween read.

[susanb]

I managed to drag myself through Meet Stroller....only 100 or so pages, but dry, dry, dry as the Sahara.....frowny please

I'm glad I did it for the challenge though....it had been on my list for a while, but I had been looking for a nice hardcover. Having a deadline made me hunt around for a cheap paperback, so now I don't feel awful about donating it to the library

Three books short of finishing the challenge and, thinking about it, I'm realizing that even with having covid (and being run down for the month after), I'm having problems these days with a whole 10 book challenge....it's not that I don't read that many books (or more) over the summer, but I don't seem able to stick with the plan that long! (Even though it's literally MY plan!) Another book will catch my attention, then I'm reading a series, and poof....down the rabbit hole

I think next year I'll plan out five or six, which seems to be my limit, before....squirrel!!!!....an off-challenge book hijacks me!

[tintin]

Well I have managed to do them all except "Mistletoe and Whine" an that is only because I had to read stuff for work OK yes I got diverted as well and had to read all the Jessie books (a slightly masochistic occupation like reading Foreign Legion memoirs - a kind of "March or Die" for dogs, but I had to know what happened...)

Highlight was Stefan Wild - "Longest Way Up, Shortest Way Down" - adult Pullein-Thompson sisters! His application to the West Midlands Mounted Branch submitted as a joke by his comrades Wild struggles through his Riding School training and gets bitten by the riding bug (and one or two naughty horses)

All smiley faces this year :-)

[Claire]

Thanks for updates Susan and Tintin. Will wrap up the challenge now. I too almost finished but not quite, mainly due to moving house. Am part-way though The Rachorse Who Wouldn't |Gallop by Clare Balding and I will give it a smiley. It won't win any prizes for literature, but nevertheless I am pleasantly surprised by it. As you may know, I find the author herself, when on TV, extremely irritating, however the voice of the book comes across as completely different. Could be ghost-written of course, as are many of these celebrity books, but if so, the racing side of things has been well-researched and seems pretty authentic (I know a fair bit about about the subject, being very interested it racing back in my youth). The heroine is pleasant and very easy to empathise with but seems a bit old-fashioned.

After a lot of deliberation, I've decided to go with Swiftly as my Star Read, although it wasn't an easy choice this year.

I take it your Star Read is Longest Way Up Tintin? Please can everyone else let me know their star books too?

[susanb]

My star read this year is my re-read...The Grand Rogue by Frances Priddy

[darkhorse]

Thank you as always Claire for organising the challenge. My star book has to be I'd Rather Not Gallop (a re-read) but, like Tintin, this year all my books were smilies and really enjoyable.

[Claire]

Haffy - do you have a *** STAR READ *** picked out?