Has a book changed your life?
I think most book reading changes life a little. There’s an internal dialogue ensues which effects thinking in one way or another whether it be purely for information or a literary or fictional exploration of lives, cultures, ideas and imagination.
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien changed my perception of what a book can be.
Travelling through forests of words and books can feel like Robert Frost’s poem
The road not taken
“Oh, I marked the first for another day!”
and at times the choice of what to read next can be a difficult one.
The book that likely changed my life the most was Black Beauty by Anna Sewell.
…there is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham…
— Black Beauty, Chapter 13, last paragraph.
Many years later when such a horse came into my life and I tried to understand him, there were challenges.
The behaviour of horses in relation to management and training by Marthe Kiley-Worthington helped discern some of the problems and soon a path opened up of everything horses, a whole family of them!
But the book that first sprung to mind offering so much sound knowledge and the confidence to keep horses in good health for many years (even oversee the delivery of a foal!) was…
Veterinary notes for horse owners by Captain M. Horace Hayes
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