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Scheherazade in Blue Jeans
freelance alchemist
Oh, child. 
5th-Jun-2011 10:15 am
MLP: Pinkie is watching you
We're purging books! (Hallelujah!) A big part of this has been Elayna going through her shelves and pulling things that she has moved beyond or things she never liked. In some cases, things she has inherited from me.

Me: "Oh, this was mine when I was little!"
Elayna: "Yeah I know. I can tell because it's about ballet."
Me, surveying the books: "...huh."
Elayna: "Ballet and horses."

She tries to put Gypsy and Nimblefoot in the donation pile, and I seize it from her.

Me: "This is the first book that made me cry!"
Elayna: "Seriously, though, what is it with the all the horse books? 'Oh, I'm a preteen coming of age! I need to figure out who I really am! I'll go ride a horse!'"

I glared. But she's pretty much right.
Comments 
5th-Jun-2011 03:24 pm (UTC)
I loved the Gypsy series. I think I still have them all, packed away in storage somewhere.
5th-Jun-2011 03:26 pm (UTC)
As always, Elayna rocks. :)
5th-Jun-2011 06:10 pm (UTC)
Agreed! I laughed aloud.

So, umm... what IS it about the horses? It is the power between one's legs? Sublimation?
5th-Jun-2011 06:26 pm (UTC)
That's my theory. That and middle school boys are mean and ponies are not (supposedly).
6th-Jun-2011 12:31 am (UTC)
I've honestly found the odds are about the same on middle school boys and ponies.
6th-Jun-2011 01:05 am (UTC)
Thus why I said "supposedly".
5th-Jun-2011 03:34 pm (UTC)
I was always with Elayna on this one. I never got the horses thing.

Ballet... I was interested at first. Then my mother lectured me about how it would deform and cripple my feet. And later told me she really didn't want me interested because I was too clumsy.
5th-Jun-2011 03:56 pm (UTC)
This whole conversation = ♥

My mom was the horse person. I reluctantly rode horses until I was old enough that we both leveled with each other and admitted that this was really really not my passion. I read a lot of horse books, too, out of a sense of obligation, and with a vague hope that they might make me want to do the horse stuff in real life more, but it never worked.
5th-Jun-2011 04:39 pm (UTC)
Our soon-to-be 13-year-old goddaughter was lucky: her mother was horse-mad as a teenager (and never lost the horse madness), and so has cheerfully promoted the horse madness by building a barn on their land (she and her partner built the barn themselves), fencing in the old farm pasture, and acquiring horses and horseback riding lessons for her. We helped a couple years ago when they acquired the Surprise Christmas Horse for the Weed (what I call our goddaughter mostly on LJ): they drove out in the middle of the night, brought the beautiful big dapple-grey ex-racing-horse home, and then we helped decorate the stall and the horse's mane at 1 am on Christmas.

Her mother, I note, is now giving riding lessons and got a horse for herself and is one of the parents in charge of the riding team from their stable and and and...

Yeah. The horse thing. I was horse-mad too, but my parents didn't have the money to put me into riding classes beyond one summer; our goddaughter's mother was on our school's riding team for a year though, and had previous experience. By the time I was old enough to pay for my own lessons, I had gone from husky teen to fat adult, and stables are very reluctant to let fat people ride (and often don't have horses who can handle big riders anyway), so I just abandoned the idea in favor of the vicarious experience.
5th-Jun-2011 07:35 pm (UTC)
"Ballet and horses" just mashed up in my mind. En pointe stallions! Pirouetting Pyrenees! ("Pirouetting ponies" seemed too easy a rhyme. By the way, have pirouetting ponies happened in MLP:FiM yet?)

I'm also, more straightforwardly, thinking of one of the Serendipity books that was about a horse. Shoot, can't find the title. Stephen Cosgrove wrote dozens of those things (I best remember Wheedle on the Needle. Mythical-like creature on a modern landmark = cool).
5th-Jun-2011 07:59 pm (UTC)
"Ballet and horses" just mashed up in my mind. En pointe stallions! Pirouetting Pyrenees!

Lipizzaners.
5th-Jun-2011 09:21 pm (UTC)
Elayna: "Seriously, though, what is it with the all the horse books? 'Oh, I'm a preteen coming of age! I need to figure out who I really am! I'll go ride a horse!'"

My daughter asked me about that once, it's a trope here too after all. I told her it was a sexual metaphor and probably related to dominance games...

Yeah apparently people really don't like it when you answer questions like that honestly.
5th-Jun-2011 10:57 pm (UTC)
"Elayna: "Seriously, though, what is it with the all the horse books? 'Oh, I'm a preteen coming of age! I need to figure out who I really am! I'll go ride a horse!'""

The fact that your teenage daughter can say that to you and not get thrashed or beheaded for it...? Awesome! =:o>

(... Um, you haven't thrashed her or beheaded her, have you? =8o{   [FRET, FRET] )
6th-Jun-2011 02:25 am (UTC)
The most memorable books I can remember age 8-12 are: Where the Red Fern Grows (omg, big tears), The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley Twins, Dracula (which was boring at that age) and The Skeleton Crew (which I loved). Okay, I was a weird kid. I do clearly remember reading Stephen King in 4th grade and being very "oooh, this has dirty stuff in it!"
6th-Jun-2011 12:39 pm (UTC)
Whoa! Gypsy and Nimblefoot....sadly misplaced my copy of that many moves ago.

Not that I'd probably read it again, but fond memories. ;)
6th-Jun-2011 03:12 pm (UTC)
OMG I loved the Gypsy books! My favorite was Gypsy from Nowhere. :)
I had acres of horse books. All of the Walter Farley and Marguerite Henrys, of course.
6th-Jun-2011 04:35 pm (UTC) - Go Elayna
Your child made me LOL.
6th-Jun-2011 05:43 pm (UTC)
What? How is going to ride a horse not the right answer?
7th-Jun-2011 01:05 am (UTC)
*sporfle* and this is why elayna is my favorite.
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