Rita Mae Brown in The Week

If you don't know, Rita Mae Brown is the author of several murder mystery series, two of which I adored when I was growing up. Mrs. Murphy, a talking cat who always comes through to solve the mystery for the humans in her unusually crime-filled rural town of Crozet, VA, charmed me, as did Brown's insistence that Sneaky Pie Brown (Rita Mae Brown's cat) supposedly co-authors her books. The other series I read was the "Sister Jane" foxhunting murder mystery series. Rita Mae Brown foxhunts herself, so all of the details are entirely accurate, and I learned a lot of foxhunting terms from her books! The Sister Jane series focuses less on the animal characters and more on the underside of foxhunting society--the juicy affairs, the hunt club political drama, and of course their tendency to murder each other. Note to self: Don't cross anyone from Crozet, VA. They'll stab you with an icicle to melt away the evidence.

When I got back from school a few weeks ago, I tried to reread Outfoxed, but I don't think I can quite immerse myself back in that fictional world just yet. Not enough time has passed since being an English major. Her style of writing is very ornate, and it's a little too adjective-happy for me to not pull my hair out about all of the unnecessary descriptors, since for the past few years I've been taught concision, concision, concision. But then again...being too concise wouldn't make for a very suspenseful mystery novel.

Rita Mae Brown not wearing an ASTM-approved helmet (tsk!) on RitaMaeBrown.com

Anyway, Rita Mae Brown was featured in The Week this week with a list of her 7 favorite animal books to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Mrs. Murphy series. I thought I would give a list of my own. I hope you'll leave a comment with your book recommendations!

via HorseBooksEtc

• Build a Better Athlete: 16 Gymnatic Exercises by Leslie Webb--This book of dressage exercises is so easy to follow and commonsensical. Each gymnasticizing exercise builds on the previous one, and with step-by-step pictures and instructions for the exercises (as well as pictures of common mistakes), you can figure out how to ask your horse to become a better athlete no matter what your discipline is. I skimmed some of the theory stuff, but she does explain the why behind each exercise if you are interested. I've started to incorporate several of them into my own riding, especially the spiral in/spiral out for getting the horse to move off my leg.

 Okay, so the rest of these are not horse-related because Rita Mae Brown used up Black Beauty (and I don't think it needs a recommendation anyway) and since I haven't read many animal books since I was young, those books are in storage. So here goes:

via Wikipedia

• Laika by Nick Abadzis--I picked up this graphic novel on a whim from a dog-themed display by the circulation desk at the library and it was such a treat to read. It's a fictionalized account of what Laika's life might have been like prior to her one-way space flight, and although it is incredibly sad (think the whirlwind life of Black Beauty minus the happy ending and plus a very confused dog), but it has such a poignant ending and great character development throughout. Also there are some sequences where Laika and her first owner, a little girl, dream of Laika as a moon dog, and those are super cute. Neat fact: Laika means "barker" in Russian. Other neat fact: Growing up on a dairy farm in Puerto Rico, my mom had a Collie/German Shepherd named Laika. I told her I read this book and she said, "Laika? Just like my old dog, how funny!" Apparently she missed the memo that her dog was named after the first dog in space, which is pretty odd considering "Laika" is not Spanish-sounding in any way, shape, or form.



via B&N

• My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl--This one is about a fabulously rich playboy named Oswald Cornelius Hendryks and his scheme with a bug, not an animal, per se. Jeez, I am really bad at staying in the "favorite animal books" category, but I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed Roald Dahl books like The Witches, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Matilda as a child but has since grown up, because My Uncle Oswald is definitely NOT for children. I would have never thought Dahl wrote for adults as well, but this book and his short stories have that same sort of formula as many of his children's books: Someone figures out a fantastical scheme, scheme works beautifully, scheme is foiled in the last few pages. This particular scheme has to do with the aphrodisiac powder made from the Sudanese Blister Beetle, artificial insemination, and the famous artists and celebrities of the early 20th century. The resultant hijinks and the fabulously eccentric characters make for a hilarious read.

My Horse

No, I didn't buy a horse.

I'm talking about the My Horse game for iPad (a gift from graduation). I would not consider myself a gamer, though years ago I loved watching the video game review show on TechTV because they went on awesome tangents. Anyway, I never understood the appeal of Farmville-like games, especially since many of the people I know who play them already own horses or even LIVE on farms. Clicking on dinky little icons and having to wait hours to see the results seemed like work rather than play. But now...I see the light.

Wee! Look at her go! No dinky icons for me!

With no real-life responsibilities for the time being, I find myself logging in to My Horse four or five times a day  about every other minute. I stayed up till 2am last night trying to get to Level 9 with my realistic-looking "brown" Quarter Horse MsCantBWrong (name inspired by the 90s song with the totally trippy video).

Er...ok, maybe not SO realistic. They have some kinks to work out with the animation. Little Miss Can't Be Wrong can switch leads all by herself in the field, but she flings up her head at the trot as if she is really ouchy. And no wonder, she kind of looks like her legs are broken or like she's doing Big Lick:

OUCH!

The great thing about My Horse is that it combines real-life aspects of horse ownership like:

mucking,

 more mucking,

and grooming the muck off your horse

with AWESOME, totally made-up aspects of horse ownership. Like getting money for winning shows (that are free to enter), grooming, and even training your horse. Your horse can even make money for you by giving lessons, starring in TV shows, and modeling in photo shoots. Another realistic aspect of the game is that everything you have to buy is ridiculously expensive, so you're suckered into playing for another hour or fifteen to afford a blanket that will match your horse's boots.

"Money...makes life happy!" (one thousand magical unicorn sparkles to person who identifies the quote).

Aside from the insidious addictiveness of the game, I have two bones to pick. A game like this would be really great for teaching kids the basics about horses...like maybe actually using the correct words for horse colors, not "brown" or "red," but "bay" and "chestnut." It might also be a good idea to differentiate between the disciplines, ie. not having barrels in a jump class and actually using discipline-appropriate saddles. Maybe that's just me being nitpicky, but as a horse person it is kind of annoying to see this called a jump saddle:

What is this? Australian? Endurance? Definitely not a jumping saddle. Also...turtle?

The other part I don't like is the user interface when riding. It's really easy (think DDR controls), but the camera angle tends to switch RIGHT at the moment you need to click to jump or turn around a barrel. It's almost impossible to watch your pretty pony go over the jumps because you have to look at the meter at the bottom of the screen to get the timing right, and sometimes the camera angle actually obscures the action.

Jeez, what is with her tail?

I get lots of shinies, but I can't see the action!

So that's kind of annoying, but there are many hilariously weird parts of the game that redeem it for me. Like the available tack options:

I want this in real life.

This is the ONLY halfway normal-looking English saddle available.

Why do I have to wait till level 47 and pay 7650 coins to get a plain white saddle pad?

Also, you can buy a unicorn.

If you poke the unicorn, it rears up just like a real unicorn.

So that's my unsolicited review of My Horse. If you have an iPad and want to play me, the game is free and my username is clakeful.