Customer Reviews

A Sunday Horse: Inside the Grand Prix Show Jumping Circuit (Capital Lifestyles)

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

 

 

For a book entitled "The Sunday Horse", one would expect it to have at least SOME horses discussed in the text; "The Sunday Horse OWNER" would really be a more apropos title for this lightweight tome.When I picked this book up, I was hoping that it would follow one particular rider or trainer or barn for their entire Grand Prix campaign. How interesting this could have been, getting to know one or two people in depth, learning about the horses they work with, the strengths & weaknesses, caring about their wins, losses, injuries...instead, I found 200 pages of 3 paragraph profiles of people who are either super-rich, or super-marginal.

The author, Vicky Moon, lists "People" magazine amongst her credits. It shows. Her writing is very much in "People"'s style, being rather breathless puff-pieces that spend considerable time dwelling on the "Lifestyles of the Rich & Horsey" aspects of her subjects. At each horse show covered in her book, the list of local socials & celebrities attending is given more attention than the International caliber horses competing!

Each chapter of this book covers one particular horse show & it's habitues, from the chairperson through the lady running a sweater shop. She opens at "Welly World" (Wellington FL, near Palm Beach) & closes at the Washington DC horse show. You may find out about the guy who directs traffic for the event, but you definitely won't know much about the Grand Prix competition itself!

As a long-time horsey person who has always dreamed of competing at Grand Prix level, I found one aspect of her book continually frustrating: she does not identify the horses in her photographs! You'll see pictures of great riders past (Rodney Jenkins, Anthony d'Ambrosio) & present (Marjorie Goldstein-Engle) but if you want to know the name of their mount, you won't find it either in either the text or the photo caption. With all the discussion of multi-million dollar equine talent in the book, one would think the horses would get an acknowledgement too; after all, these are HORSE shows, not RIDER shows!

Another annoying lack is one of either index or sources. Ms. Moon must have consulted literature other than show press releases; why not list them? Why make a reader page through the book looking for a mention of their particular favorites, when an index could make it so easy?

Typos, mis-spellings, and confusing sentences abound as well; this is a book in need of a good proof-reader!

If the only thing you know about Grand Prix show jumping is having seen it once or twice on television, you may enjoy "The Sunday Horse". If, however, you are a horse-lover who has stood at the In-Gate yourself, you won't find much here that you couldn't read in a People magazine article. What a shame.

A Sunday Horse suffers from a lack of editing. The first chapter is terrible and the second is boring. Vicky Moon is a charming writer but somebody should've convinced her to either cut these two chapters or combine them into one. The book doesn't get fun until chapter three when she tells the story of a bizarre horse kidnapping. After that the book takes off with stories of grooms, writers, vets, carrot sellers, braiders, riders, and all the people who make the grand prix circuit run. One thing I really liked about the book is how Moon makes it clear that a person may not be a great rider and may never win the big shows but with talent, detrmination and flexibility they can still have a career that keeps them "in" horses.

I almost gave up during the first chapter but decided to keep reading because hey, I'd already spent my money, and I'm glad I kept going. Hopefully Vicky Moon will come out with a new edition that is packaged better..

In the hands of a talented writer backed by good content and copy editors, this book really could have been something. Instead, it's a disjointed mishmash of name-dropping (an earlier reviewer's assessment of Moon's style as breathless is right on the money) and rambling attempts at folksy storytelling, riddled with grammar problems, non sequiturs, and typos. Let's just say I'm glad I bought it used.

I am a horsey person and was hoping this would have more content related to the actual horses and the actual show jumping!

Instead, it was a breathless, and not particularly well written, run through a long list of celebrities and tedious accounts of how much various things cost. Yawn.

Did you know that Bruce Springsteen and Glenn Close go to horse shows because their kids ride? Big deal. Having spent plenty of time traveling the East Coast horse show circuit as a junior rider, I know that most horse people are singularly unimpressed with celebrities and name dropping...who IS the target audience for this book? Not horse people.

The book gave a lot of inside information on riders and owners and would be good for someone just getting involved in showing because it gave data on average prices, etc. Good insight into the showjumping world.

Finally a good book on an often overlooked sports which deserves to be written about with the care that Vicky Moon has provided in these pages. The book has covered not just the riders and the trainers, but the grooms who work so hard. I loved the stories about the carrot man. It brings together the glamor, the glitz and yes, also the darker side. The first book to really tell it like it really is.

Vicky Moon brings out her stinging but fun writing style again in "A Sunday Horse," a behind-the-scenes look at the world of the Grand Prix Circuit. With the Olympics coming up, this book was an especially interesting read, and I look forward to watching the Olympic Equestrian events with Vicky Moon's book next to me. Her writing style combines the humor of "Best in Show" with a genuine love and appreciation of horses and the horse world.