100 books like Horse Girls

By Halimah Marcus,

Here are 100 books that Horse Girls fans have personally recommended if you like Horse Girls. Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion

Janet Jones Author Of Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship

From my list on horse-and-human teams.

Why am I passionate about this?

Horses have helped me negotiate the world since early childhood. I’ve worked as a horse trainer, show competitor, catch rider, barn grunt, and riding instructor. As a UCLA-trained brain scientist and full professor, I also taught human perception, language, memory, and thought for almost 25 years. Combining these interests produced an “aha” moment, leading to my development of brain-based horsemanship. Successful horse-and-human teams require an understanding of how prey and predator brains interact. With that understanding, both species learn to communicate mutually via body language. We humans cooperate in this fashion and degree with no other species of prey animal—it’s a rare and special bond! 

Janet's book list on horse-and-human teams

Janet Jones Why did Janet love this book?

A New York Times bestseller, this is the contemporary classic that kick-started equine trade publications in the 21st century. Williams' book took me on a fascinating tour of the world’s critical locations for investigating the evolution and domestication of the modern horse. Science and fun at the same time! I loved her rare combination of meticulous research and passionate entertainment. 

By Wendy Williams,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Horse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New York Times Bestseller and New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

A Best Book of 2015, The Wall Street Journal

"Love is the driver for Wendy Williams's new book, The Horse . . . [an] affectionate, thoroughgoing, good-hearted book." —Jaimy Gordon, The New York Times Book Review

"Charming and deeply interesting . . . Ms. Williams does a marvelous job." —Pat Shipman, The Wall Street Journal

The book horse-lovers have been waiting for

Horses have a story to tell, one of resilience, sociability, and intelligence, and of partnership with human beings. In The Horse, the journalist and equestrienne…


Book cover of The Mind of the Horse: An Introduction to Equine Cognition

Janet Jones Author Of Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship

From my list on horse-and-human teams.

Why am I passionate about this?

Horses have helped me negotiate the world since early childhood. I’ve worked as a horse trainer, show competitor, catch rider, barn grunt, and riding instructor. As a UCLA-trained brain scientist and full professor, I also taught human perception, language, memory, and thought for almost 25 years. Combining these interests produced an “aha” moment, leading to my development of brain-based horsemanship. Successful horse-and-human teams require an understanding of how prey and predator brains interact. With that understanding, both species learn to communicate mutually via body language. We humans cooperate in this fashion and degree with no other species of prey animal—it’s a rare and special bond! 

Janet's book list on horse-and-human teams

Janet Jones Why did Janet love this book?

This book surveys and explores the facts behind how horses perceive and think. Leblanc was the first to collect equine research that explores the horse’s mentality. It’s one of the academic references that helped me create, test, and apply my ideas for my own book. I like the way he pulls research together and presents it with care and accuracy. 

By Michel-Antoine Leblanc, Giselle Weiss (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Mind of the Horse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Horses were first domesticated about 6,000 years ago on the vast Eurasian steppe extending from Mongolia to the Carpathian Mountains. Yet only in the last two decades have scientists begun to explore the specific mental capacities of these animals. Responding to a surge of interest in fields from ethology to comparative psychology and evolutionary biology, Michel-Antoine Leblanc presents an encyclopedic synthesis of scientific knowledge about equine behavior and cognition. The Mind of the Horse provides experts and enthusiasts alike with an up-to-date understanding of how horses perceive, think about, and adapt to their physical and social worlds.

Much of what…


Book cover of The Age of the Horse: An Equine Journey Through Human History

Janet Jones Author Of Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship

From my list on horse-and-human teams.

Why am I passionate about this?

Horses have helped me negotiate the world since early childhood. I’ve worked as a horse trainer, show competitor, catch rider, barn grunt, and riding instructor. As a UCLA-trained brain scientist and full professor, I also taught human perception, language, memory, and thought for almost 25 years. Combining these interests produced an “aha” moment, leading to my development of brain-based horsemanship. Successful horse-and-human teams require an understanding of how prey and predator brains interact. With that understanding, both species learn to communicate mutually via body language. We humans cooperate in this fashion and degree with no other species of prey animal—it’s a rare and special bond! 

Janet's book list on horse-and-human teams

Janet Jones Why did Janet love this book?

Horses have been helping humans build civilization since the time of their domestication at least 6,000 years ago. This book analyzes the horse’s contribution to construction, transportation, military warfare, hunting, food, therapy, frontier expedition, and more. Interesting in its own right, it also taught me to look with new eyes at the modern cities and towns, the farmland and infrastructure, even the art and music, that humans created only with the cooperation of their horses. I enjoyed thinking about how both Western and Eastern societies have horses as their common cornerstone.

By Susanna Forrest,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Age of the Horse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Man has always been fascinated by Equus caballus, recasting horse power into many forms: a hunk of meat, an industrial and agricultural machine, a luxury good, a cherished dancer, a comrade in arms and a symbol of a mythical past. From the wild tarpans sought by the Nazis to jade-laden treasure steeds in Ancient China, broken-down nags recycled into sausages and furniture stuffing, stallions that face fighting bulls and brewery horses that charmed the founder of the Sikh Empire, The Age of the Horse knits the history of the horse into that of humans, through revolution, war, social change and…


Book cover of The Horse God Built: The Untold Story of Secretariat, the World's Greatest Racehorse

Janet Jones Author Of Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship

From my list on horse-and-human teams.

Why am I passionate about this?

Horses have helped me negotiate the world since early childhood. I’ve worked as a horse trainer, show competitor, catch rider, barn grunt, and riding instructor. As a UCLA-trained brain scientist and full professor, I also taught human perception, language, memory, and thought for almost 25 years. Combining these interests produced an “aha” moment, leading to my development of brain-based horsemanship. Successful horse-and-human teams require an understanding of how prey and predator brains interact. With that understanding, both species learn to communicate mutually via body language. We humans cooperate in this fashion and degree with no other species of prey animal—it’s a rare and special bond! 

Janet's book list on horse-and-human teams

Janet Jones Why did Janet love this book?

The beautiful true story of Eddie Sweat, the groom who bonded with Secretariat for life throughout the horse’s racing career, stallion service, and retirement. Sweat was the son of a tenant farmer in South Carolina, the sixth of nine children in a poor family. His daily efforts and devotion to the finest racehorse of all time were largely ignored until this book came out in 2007 long after Secretariat died. This story took me for a heartwarming ride that reminded me of true horsemanship and the roles of the most important (but lowest paid) people on a performance horse’s successful team.

By Lawrence Scanlan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Horse God Built as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Most of us know the legend of Secretariat, the tall, handsome chestnut racehorse whose string of honours runs long and rich: the only two-year-old ever to win Horse of the Year, in 1972; winner in 1973 of the Triple Crown, his times in all three races still unsurpassed; featured on the cover of "Time", "Newsweek", and "Sports Illustrated"; the only horse listed on ESPN's top fifty athletes of the twentieth century (ahead of Mickey Mantle). His final race at Toronto's Woodbine Racetrack is a touchstone memory for horse lovers everywhere. Yet while Secretariat will be remembered forever, one man, Eddie…


Book cover of Females

Sallie Tisdale Author Of The Lie about the Truck: Survivor, Reality TV, and the Endless Gaze

From my list on the existential crisis of looking in a mirror.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a writer, I’ve always been interested in ambiguity and ambivalence. How does that apply to the self? What does it mean to present myself to others? How do I appear to the world and how close is that to what I see myself to be? Are we ever truly seen—or willing to be seen? In a world where cameras exist everywhere and we are encouraged to record rather than simply be, how do we look in a mirror? Hannah Arendt said that we could tell reality from falsehood because reality endures. But I feel that nothing I experience endures; nothing remains the same, including the reflection. If anything lasts, it may be my own make-believe. Everything I write is, in some way, this question. Who is that?

Sallie's book list on the existential crisis of looking in a mirror

Sallie Tisdale Why did Sallie love this book?

A short, powerful investigation of how we construct and succumb to the lies of gender. Chu explores our fears of desire and how we allow politics to corrupt identity, believing gender to be so constructed that it can only be given and not created. Female is a quality we all carry, whatever label we use. Chu forces the reader to look in the mirror with a question instead of a statement, always uncertain about who that person really is. 

By Andrea Long Chu,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Females as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Everyone is female, and everyone hates it."

So begins Andrea Long Chu's genre-defying investigation into sex and lies, desperate artists and reckless politics, the smothering embrace of gender and the punishing force of desire.

Drawing inspiration from a forgotten play by Valerie Solanas-the woman who wrote the SCUM Manifesto and shot Andy Warhol-Chu aims her searing wit and surgical intuition at targets ranging from performance art to psychoanalysis, incels to porn, and even feminists like herself. Each step of the way she defends the indefensible claim that femaleness is less a biological state of women and more a fatal existential…


Book cover of Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine

Jeanette Bent Author Of Dark Star Reclaiming Lilith

From my list on strong female protagonist in an ascending world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been rising for years. In fact, Dark Star: Reclaiming Lilith is the culmination of 18 years’ worth of my personal ascension, which is certainly still a work in progress. My book is written in an extremely magical realistic, sci-fi/fantastical manner. I do believe that there are a cohort of women here on Planet Earth right now who’ve incarnated to help carry Gaia into her 5th dimension. Especially now, it’s relevant to move our planet into a more sustainable, spiritual, and connected way. If our voices can span across genres, generations, and gender, then maybe, they can reach all corners of the Universe before it’s too late for us and our planet.

Jeanette's book list on strong female protagonist in an ascending world

Jeanette Bent Why did Jeanette love this book?

This book not only changed my entire life, but it has also helped me shape the ending of my own book. Wilson gave me the permission and vocabulary to express abstract concepts that I was carrying around; sacred rage, patriarchal oppression, a lineage of matricidal trauma… big stuff. Rather than a book, Maiden to Mother is a cultural and feminine ancestral movement. By traversing your own underworlds and excavating all of the buried, scorned, traumatized parts of ourselves, we can then begin the healing journey and live honest to our souls. In this non-fiction book, Wilson asks the reader to go where they’ve never gone before, and in return, promises liberation and true joy. She delivers this in a no-bullshit manner. And guess what? It works.

By Sarah Durham Wilson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Maiden to Mother as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

When the goddess culture was stolen and buried, so too were women's rites of passage into our wild, intuitive femininity and maturity.
With Maiden to Mother, Sarah Durham Wilson excavates these ancient rites, guiding us through a sacred and crucial initiation from the immature Maiden into the archetypal Mother - the powerful, safe, compassionate, full-bloom feminine life force that exists within all of us.

Becoming the Mother is every woman's birthright - regardless of whether or not she raises children. The Mother is who we needed as a child, who we were meant to be in this life, and who…


Book cover of Queenie

Nichola K. Johnson Author Of Sounds of Diamonds

From my list on real-life stories about struggles in life.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a quiet and very shy child, I found myself sitting alone reading books rather than playing with other kids. My love for reading at the time was restricted to children’s books like The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe or Roald Dhal stories until I upgraded to Enid Blyton Books and Mills & Boon romances as a teen. It wasn’t until I reached my twenties when I actually found the genre I loved. It was through my love of these stories I came to realise I didn’t have to hide anymore, and my love for these stories planted a small seed in my mind that I would have the courage to write my own.

Nichola's book list on real-life stories about struggles in life

Nichola K. Johnson Why did Nichola love this book?

Carty-Williams tells a very clever and witty story of Queenie’s struggles navigating life as a young black woman in South East London, right where I grew up. I can relate to her work life, friendships, and love life so much it’s unreal. Whilst reading this book I could really feel myself within the plot as I’ve walked on some of the streets she talks about, been to places she talks about and of course, we all have a past and a story about our childhoods that make us who we are today, especially when they have been challenging. 

By Candice Carty-Williams,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Queenie as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019

NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019 BY WOMAN’S DAY, NEWSDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BUSTLE, AND BOOK RIOT!

“[B]rilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking.” —Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You

For fans ofLusterandI May Destroy You,a disarmingly honest,unapologetically black, and undeniably witty debut novel that will speak to those who have gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.

Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting…


Book cover of Still Missing

Rachael Tamayo Author Of Crazy Love

From my list on psychological thrillers to turn your head inside out.

Why am I passionate about this?

When it comes to dark and twisted books with jaw dropping twists, I can’t get enough. I love them. I crave darkly creative books that make you think. Anything but your standard, everyday domestic thriller with the traumatized alcoholic main character. As a child I watched Law and Order and Masterpiece Theater mysteries with my mother. I loved a good British thriller. I suppose I got it from her, it was always something we shared. I veered clear of darker reading growing up, you don’t want to freak your parents out, of course. But now as an adult, I love it. No gore, no graphic shock horror for me. Psychological thrillers all the way. 

Rachael's book list on psychological thrillers to turn your head inside out

Rachael Tamayo Why did Rachael love this book?

This is the first book that I grabbed after seeing a BookTok recommendation for it. The premise was intriguing and what the reviewer said about it left me searching to see if there was an audiobook version. 

The only thing that stopped me from listening to this book in one sitting was life. Talk about a book that will leave you aching with the character, angry, and desperate for answers. Holy hot damn! I was in tears, I was gasping, I was listening with my mouth hanging open, grimacing in horror and I loved every bit of it. 

Trigger warnings throughout this book. I won't lie, this book is dark and horrible (in a good way) but it also left me feeling down. It's haunting and the narrative pulls you so far in you feel like you are there with her, held captive right by her side. Not to mention…

By Chevy Stevens,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Still Missing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On the day she was abducted, Annie O'Sullivan, a thirty-two year old realtor, had three goals—sell a house, forget about a recent argument with her mother, and be on time for dinner with her ever- patient boyfriend.

The open house is slow, but when her last visitor pulls up in a van as she's about to leave, Annie thinks it just might be her lucky day after all. Interwoven with the story of the year Annie spent as the captive of psychopath in a remote mountain cabin, which unfolds through sessions with her psychiatrist, is a second narrative recounting events…


Book cover of New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq

Lior B. Sternfeld Author Of Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth-Century Iran

From my list on Jewish histories of the Middle East.

Why am I passionate about this?

I always felt that Middle Eastern studies is different from other fields of history. Its ever-presence in our life, the news cycle, religious life, political life, yet, because of language barriers and other filters, there’s a gap in knowledge that is highly conspicuous when forming one’s opinion. When I started my academic training, I felt like I was swimming in this ocean of histories that were completely unknown to me. I studied the Jewish histories of the region only later in my training and found that this gap is even more visible when talking about the history of Jews in the Middle East, because of misconceptions of antisemitism, the Israel-Palestine conflict, political tilt of media outlet, and more. For me, entering this field was a way to understand long-term processes in my own society, and expand the body of scholarship to enrich the public conversation on top of the academic one.

Lior's book list on Jewish histories of the Middle East

Lior B. Sternfeld Why did Lior love this book?

Iraq was home to about 150,000 Jews until 1948-1951. Baghdad was a very much Jewish city. Iraqi Jews were very assimilated, but there was very little known about the political and social history of Iraqi Jews beyond the Zionist story. While many of the Iraqi Jews did indeed view Zionism as a viable solution for them, overlooking Jewish involvement in Iraqi national and communist organizations misses several of the most fascinating transformations of any Jewish community in the world. In this book, Bashkin analyzed the social, cultural, and national participation of Iraqi Jews from within the perspective of Iraqi society. Interestingly, many of the patterns continued even after their migration to Israel.

By Orit Bashkin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked New Babylonians as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Although Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi patriots, their community-which had existed in Iraq for more than 2,500 years-was displaced following the establishment of the state of Israel. New Babylonians chronicles the lives of these Jews, their urban Arab culture, and their hopes for a democratic nation-state. It studies their ideas about Judaism, Islam, secularism, modernity, and reform, focusing on Iraqi Jews who internalized narratives of Arab and Iraqi nationalisms and on those who turned to communism in the 1940s. As the book reveals, the ultimate displacement of this community was not the result of a perpetual persecution on the…


Book cover of How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America

Cheryl Lynn Greenberg Author Of Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century

From my list on Black-Jewish relations.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor who teaches and works in the field of African American History. Because I am both white and Jewish, I’ve been repeatedly asked to give talks about relationships between African Americans and white Jewish Americans, and about what “went wrong” to shatter the “grand alliance” of the civil rights movement embodied by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. I had no answer, but I suspected that none of the stories that we had been told, whether good or bad, were fully true. So I went back to the sources and uncovered a complex and multilayered history. Black and Jewish collaboration was never a given, and underlying tensions and conflicts reflected the broader realities of race and class in the U.S. In the book I explored how these historical and political forces operated, and continue to resonate today.

Cheryl's book list on Black-Jewish relations

Cheryl Lynn Greenberg Why did Cheryl love this book?

Now that I’ve raised the issue of whiteness – ways in which American structures and institutions reflect the agendas and interests of white people, and the role those structures play in shaping opportunity and life experiences -- here I want to bring it front and center. Many white people don’t recognize how they benefit from having white skin (called “white privilege”) and many white ethnic groups, including many white Jews in the U.S., deny their white privilege altogether, insisting that they too have been the victim of white discrimination, and that anti-Black racism is no different. Brodkin offers a powerful counter-narrative, pointing out the many important ways that American Jews of European descent did indeed benefit from their white skin even when they did not realize it. 

By Karen Brodkin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The fashion identities in the context of a wider conversation about American nationhood, to whom it belongs and what belonging means. Race and ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality are all staple ingredients in this conversation. They are salient aspects of social being from which economic practices, political policies, and popular discourses create ""Americans."" Because all of these facets of social being have such significant meaning on a national scale, they also have major consequences for both individuals and groups in terms of their success and well-being, as well as how they perceive themselves socially and politically.

The history of Jews…


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