Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover's Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

So a quick Wikipedia search showed that there are over 200 titles in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series.  Don't worry, I'm not going to review them all, I don't think I could handle that.  But I am going to read and review all of the ones on my bookshelf already, so I can justify getting rid of them.  This book wasn't actually that bad, it had some decent stories in it.

Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover's Soul is about horses (and maybe a mule or two).  So obviously if you are not a horse lover, this probably isn't the book for you.  It's broken down into different sections, like "And....They're Off" which describes horse racing or "Horses as Healers" which shows the calming influences of horses.  All of the stories are short stories, no more than a few pages long.  I can't say there were really any stories that stood out for me or that I was particularly taken with.  They were all nice in that calming sort of way these books have, but nothing was outstanding.  And in the beginning at least, a lot of these stories involved the horse dying.  Which was a little disturbing to start a book out that way, especially considering it was supposed to be uplifting.

Since this book is more about horses than people, obviously the little quirks described are all the horses.  There are stories about difficult to train horses, horses that are so sweet they'll do anything, horses that are good with children, etc.  It kind of shows that horses have their own personalities aside from just being animals.  I've never really spent that much time around horses, so this part at least, was informative to me.  It also made me a little jealous though, no matter how much I wished for a horse as a child, I never got one, and I only got to go riding once or twice.  But I guess for a city girl, that's pretty good.  I have a feeling that people who were around horses more would find it easier to relate to this book.

The format of this book is a good one for reading in little doses.  Sure you can read the book in one sitting if you'd like, but if you're one of those people that prefers to take a few pages at a time, this book really lends itself to that.  The short story format is easy to read and there are a lot of stories in this book.  And a good variety of them too, although after awhile some start to sound the same. 

An ok book, good for those who love horses or short inspiring stories.  I can't say that I'd ever read this book again, but it was good for a first time read.

Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover's Soul
Copyright 2003
414 pages