Customer Reviews

My Racing Heart: The Passionate World of Thoroughbreds and the Track

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read "Seabiscuit" last summer, and I have never been on a horse. I heard an interview with the author, and I picked it up. I also took a gamble on Nan Mooney's "My Racing Heart", and was not disappointed. Her voice jumps off the page- fierce and wounded and powerful. She brought me back to a time that I had forgotten, when we choose to change, and give up a part of oursleves. I found so much honesty in these pages, about how girls grow up, and who we pretend to be. The wild child in Miss Mooney's book, is so loveable, difficult, and frustratingly stuck. Her portrait of her grandmother conjured so many fantasies of these old Pioneer women.. I wanted to have this woman show me how to ride a horse, and live a life. I want to buy this book for every girl going through these years ( 14- 40??) of reclaiming that sense of danger and adventure, and LIFE. Such a great read- perfect for a summer of reflection and adventure.

I never rode a horse and probably never will. But I love a good story and I love beautiful language. My Racing Heart is both. The author's story is compelling not only because the horse information was previously unknown to me, but because we all have someone in our lives that was an inspiration--like the author's grandmother. Also, the verbage of the book itself was exceptional--gorgeous, interesting sentences that leapt off the page. The author has a flowing, vivid, picturesque writing style that keeps you reading.

Nan Mooney's "My Racing Heart" provides a box seat view into the world of horse racing. It is an amorous tale of a woman and her grandmother's passions for Thoroughbred horses. It is an intriguing story, full of history and honesty. After reading the book I have developed a respect and an understanding for the Thoroughbred horse racing world that I had never had before!

I recently purchased the above book, and I thought it was one of the best books I've ever read about the thoroughbred industry.
It is written by a young woman who was introduced to horse racing by her grandmother. The book tells the story of the author's love for horse racing, and her grandmother. It is a sensitive and well written tribute to both.
Ms. Mooney entwines her experiences with racing history, and delivers an extremely enjoyable narrative that is at once educational and inspiring. There are probably few facts contained in the book that are not already known to most "track rats"; but she tells them in such an engaging manner, that even the most seasoned and hard bitten horse player should enjoy the retelling.
Her account of her love affair with the thoroughbreds is so personal, you feel you really know the author, and understand why she feels the way she does.
It is a sentimental and loving account of the maturation of a young woman, and how she has come to where she is today - a devoted fan of the sport. Her grandmother would be proud.
I highly recommend it to the readers on the board!

I won't go on a long diatribe. I think the previous reviewers have said what I would have said. In a word - this book is excellent. It's well researched and Nan Mooney clearly has a passion for the topic which means everything when you're writing. There are no dull filler chapters at all. The intertwined story of Mae Mae is a hoot - she is the kind of grandmother we all would like to have as our own.

In sum - if you are new to the world of thoroughbreds and racing this is the book to start with. By the time you are through, you will appreciate the history and understand the passion and love of thoroughbreds.

This book kept me up all night reading. It is full of great stories and many laughs. I am looking forward to the next book by Nan Mooney.

I picked up a copy of My Racing Heart because I'd heard it was an unusual, well-told story. "But I'm not a horse person," I said.

It didn't matter. This is a book about horse-racing meant for people who value a rich and passionate life. The history of the thoroughbred was fascinating, but moreover, the story of the author and her grandmother finding meaning in horseracing -- and in the tradition of being together -- isn't like anything else I have ever read. It sounds corny, but it was inspirational and very, very satisfying.

This book is driving me crazy. What's wrong with it? I keep thinking I ought to love it. It's well written. Mooney loves horses and the track. She hates what's happening to both, but with a good sense of history she understands nothing's new under the sun. So why is it such a slog to read? Because it's all over the place? Because I can't get a grip on who her grandmother was and Mooney wants me to? Because there's nothing compelling, nothing happening that drives the book or the reader forward? I can't get a handle on what this book is about. Her racing heart. Okay. Her interest in Captain Steve's Derby which the reader forgets is the spine on which she hangs her musings? And she certainly knows a thing or two about her subject. In the end two vital things are missing. The two things a book MUST have to succeed as a book and is why Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit: An American Legend crossed all boundaries. Narrative drive and passion. It's a lukewarm forgettable but horse loving book. An odd experience that I can't quite capture in this review. Just like Mooney can't quite capture the beauty and excitement of the horse or the track...but not for lack of trying.

Ms. Mooney's engaging writing style brings the world of horse racing magically alive. A lover of horses and horse racing since she was a child (thanks to her spectacular grandmother, whose story is woven throughout the book), Ms. Mooney's passion for the sport is infectious. I especially liked the thorough and entertaining way she covered the history of the sport. I'm looking forward to reading more from her; that her next work will immensely please seems to be a safe bet.

Nan Mooney, My Racing Heart (Harper, 2002)

Nan Mooney loves horses. Specifically, Thoroughbreds, the ones who hit the track, dust it up with six to twelve of their closest friends, and make humans gape in awe at the process. This odd amalgam of personal-memoir-cum-treatise-on-track-life is not an unfamiliar breed to the horse fan; the measuring stick against which all such books are brought is Bill Barich's stunning Laughing in the Hills. I'm sure one day, another book that good in that genre will arrive. While My Racing Heart has its good points, to be simple about it, this ain't it.

Where Barich succeeds as so many others (Michael Klein, Mooney, Liz Mitchell, and many others) fail is in his ability to take two different things that have inherently different paces and make them merge together into one book whose readability is consistent across chapters on differing subjects (in Barich's case, handicapping the races at Golden Gate while dealing with his mother's cancer). He meshes the two in such a way that, despite being parallel narratives happening a country apart from one another, the whole thing flows. Seamless, like an egg, as Stephen King once said. In Mooney's case the two main threads are a basic nuts-and-bolts look at the Thoroughbred industry from someone with enough clout to get inside the lines but not enough cynicism to keep pumping out the same old platitudes and a memoir about her grandmother, who introduced her to horse racing at an age tender enough that I suspect her parents weren't very happy. Either of these two things on their own would have stood as a book in itself; the slow, meandering passages about her grandmother and how the two of them interacted and the snappy, sometimes sarcastic looks at track life. It is when the two are entwined with one another that things break down to the extent they do, with the reader finding himself transported with no warning from the high of making friends with a Kentucky Derby contender to a lazy meditation on what life must have been like in the early twenties in Alaska.

Not to say it isn't worth reading; that's not it at all. There is some fine stuff here. It just could have used a little tuning. ** ½