Horse People: Scenes from the Riding Life

One mark of a good writer is to engage readers on a topic in which they have no inherent interest. This is what Korda, editor-in-chief at Simon & Schuster and author of several popular memoirs, does here with horses and horse riding. For, although the publicity copy that accompanies the book earnestly gives numbers on how many people ride, the fact remains that the horse world, primarily of New York, is not on most readers' radar screens. So Korda draws us in slowly with stories about the persnickety folks who populate that world and what it feels like to be astride so powerful an animal and what it feels like to fall off. That one of the earlier stories in the book is the one about how he began an affair with the woman who was to become his second wife doesn't hurt when it comes to keeping readers intrigued. But it is the horses who are the stars of the story; certainly they are more appealing than the many wealthy, oblivious people who dominate the horsey crowd. Korda wisely casts himself as an Everyman in this rarefied world, sharing an intense camaraderie with other riders but, nonetheless, more knowing than them and certainly friendlier. As in his previous book, Country Matters (2001), this is rather self-indulgently illustrated with Korda's pencil drawings. In fact, the whole book is a bit self-indulgent; the trick here is that you barely notice.