Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand

Seabiscuit: An American Legend is the ultimate underdog story. Seabiscuit was an unlikely champion; his legs were crooked; he had a sad little tail; and he was precisely the color of mud. For two years, he floundered at the lowest level of racing, misunderstood and mishandled, as slow as growing grass, before his dormant talent was discovered by three men. One was Tom Smith, known as "The Lone Plainsman," a virtually mute mustang breaker who had come from the vanishing frontier, bearing the secrets of horses. One was Red Pollard, a half-blind failed prizefighter and failing jockey who had been living in a horse stall since being abandoned at a makeshift racetrack as a boy. The third was Charles Howard, a former bicycle repairman who made a fortune by introducing the automobile to the American West. Bought for a bargain-basement price by Howard and rehabilitated by Smith and Pollard, Seabiscuit overcame a phenomenal run of bad fortune to become one of the most spectacular, dominant and charismatic performers in sports history. Competing in the cruelest years of the Depression, the rags-to-riches horse emerged as an American cultural icon, drawing an immense and fanatical following, inspiring an avalanche of merchandising, and establishing himself as the single biggest newsmaker of 1938. ~about the book

Horsey Terms

Also Ran - Any selection not finishing 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th in a race or event.

Bat -  A jockey's whip.

Blow-out - A short, timed workout of about a mile in distance, usually a day before a race, designed to sharpen the speed of a horse (blow him out).

Breakdown - When a horse suffers a potentially career-ending injury.

Bug Boy - An apprentice rider.

Chalk - Wagering favorite in a race. Dates from the days when on-track bookmakers would write current odds on a chalkboard.

Colors (Colours) - Racing silks, the jacket and cap worn by jockeys. Silks can be generic and provided by the track or specific to one owner.

Fast (track) - Optimum condition for a dirt track that is dry, even, resilient and fast.

Gelding - A male horse that has been castrated.

Hand - Four inches. A horse's height is measured in hands and inches from the top of the shoulder (withers) to the ground, e.g., 15.2 hands is 15 hands, 2 inches. Thoroughbreds typically range from 15 to 17 hands.

Mare - Female horse five-years-old or older.

Nose - Smallest advantage a horse can win by. 

Over The Top - When a horse is considered to have reached its peak for that season.

Place - Finish in the top two

Scratch (Scratching) - To be taken out of a race before it starts.

Show - Third position at the finish.

Sire - Father of a horse.

Wire - The finish line of a race.

Seabiscuit vs. War Admiral - 1938 Match Race

Girl With A Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Girl With a Pearl Earring tells the story of Griet, a 16-year-old Dutch girl who becomes a maid in the house of the painter Johannes Vermeer. Her calm and perceptive manner not only helps her in her household duties, but also attracts the painter's attention. Though different in upbringing, education and social standing, they have a similar way of looking at things. Vermeer slowly draws her into the world of his paintings - the still, luminous images of solitary women in domestic settings. ~authors website

Little is known for certain about Vermeer's life and career. He was born in 1632, the son of a silk worker with a taste for buying and selling art. 

Vermeer himself was also active in the art trade. He lived and worked in Delft all his life. His works are rare. Of the 35 or 36 paintings generally attributed to him, most portray figures in interiors. All his works are admired for the sensitivity with which he rendered effects of light and color and for the poetic quality of his images. ~complete vermeer

What the Author Read in 2002 (update to current reads)

December 2002 :

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 
The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith 
Under the Eagle's Shadow by Mark Hertsgaard 
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

November 2002 :

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt 
Life of Pi by Yann Martell

October 2002 :

Bad Blood by Lorna Sage 
The Children Who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham 
The Necropolis Railway by Andrew Martin

September 2002 :

Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles 
About the Author by John Colapinto 
Embers by Sandor Marai 

August 2002:

Affinity by Sarah Waters 
I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson 
We Made a Garden by Margery Fish 

July 2002:

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer 
Disturbance of the Inner Ear by Joyce Hackett 
Daughter of Venice by Donna Jo Napoli 
A Parrot in the Pepper Tree by Chris Stewart

June 2002:

The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason 

May 2002:

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton 
Driving over Lemons by Chris Stewart 
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie

April 2002:

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman 
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman 

March 2002:

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters 
The Orchard on Fire by Shena Mackay 
Little Boy Lost by Marganita Lasky 
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri 
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket 
Northern Lights (aka The Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman

Alexandre Desplat - Girl with a Pearl Earring

The Beach House by Georgia Bockoven

The beach house is a peaceful summer heaven, a place to escape mundane troubles. Here, four families find their feelings intensified and their lives transformed. With equal measures of heartbreak and happiness, this unforgettable story tells of the beauty of life and the power of love, and speaks to every woman who has ever clung to a child or loved a man. ~from the publisher

When thirty-year-old Julia, mourning the death of her husband, decides to sell the Santa Cruz beach house they owned together, she changes the lives of all the families who rent it year after year. Teenaged Chris discovers the bittersweet joy of first love. Maggie and Joe, married sixty-five years, courageously face a separation that even their devotion cannot prevent. The married woman Peter yearns for suddenly comes within his reach. And Julia ultimately finds the strength to rebuild her life—something she once thought impossible.

Author Biography 

Georgia Bockoven is an award-winning author who began writing fiction after a successful career as a freelance journalists and photographer. Her books have sold more than four million copies worldwide. Her first book for HarperCollins, A Marriage of Convenience, will soon be a CBS movie starring Jane Seymour and James Brolin. The mother of two, she resides in Northern California with her husband, John.

Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

De Bernières' story takes place on Cephallonia, a small Greek island that is still, in the years before World War II, touched with all the magic of Greek legend, and suffused with a light that is "as though straight from the imagination of God in His youngest days, when He still believed that all was good" [pp. 6-7]. There the elderly Dr. Iannis and his beautiful daughter, Pelagia, enjoy an idyllic existence, and at the age of seventeen Pelagia falls in love and becomes engaged to a handsome young fisherman, Mandras. But in 1940 the Italians attack Greece, and the violent reality of the war disrupts the villagers' quiet lives and changes them forever. Mandras leaves Cephallonia to go to war, and upon Greece's defeat by the Axis the island is occupied by Mussolini's army. One of the Italian officers is billeted with Dr. Iannis: Antonio Corelli, a high-spirited and generous young man who plays the mandolin like an angel and inspires impromptu opera performances among his troops. Nominally an invader, an enemy to the Cephallonians, Corelli soon becomes a cherished member of their community and Pelagia inevitably becomes fascinated by him with all his promise of music, love, and joy. The defeat of the Italian army at the hands of the Allied forces brings new traumas and dilemmas for Pelagia and Corelli, as the Germans rout their erstwhile Italian allies with a series of hair-raising murders and atrocities, and, after the armistice, Greece herself is plunged into a brutal civil war between Communist and royalist forces. Pelagia's optimism and love of life is challenged as she suffers dreadful losses, but her courage and tenacity sustain her, and finally her lifelong search for love does not go unrewarded.

About the Author 

Louis de Bernières has been awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book Eurasia Region in 1991 and 1992, and for Best Book in 1995. He was selected by Granta as one of the twenty Best of Young British Novelists in 1993, and lives in Norfolk, East Anglia. ~about the author