It’s the second day of the week! It’s also time for a Top 5 Tuesday update. Top 5 Tuesdays was initially created by Shanah @ the Bionic Bookworm but is now currently being hosted by Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads.

This week’s topic: Top 5 Books with Horses

I can’t believe I haven’t done this yet, but the first Tuesday in November is always the Melbourne Cup, Australia’s most famous horse race. So, tell me your favourite books with horses.

A Horse Walks Into A Bar by David Grossman

David Grossman’s A Horse Walks Into A Bar was my first novel by an Israeli writer and the first initially written in Hebrew. Winner of the International Booker Prize in 2017, the story was conveyed by Avishai Lazar, a retired district court judge who was invited by Dovaleh Greenstein to attend his stand-up routine in a bar in the Israeli coastal town of Netanya. Instead of a stand-up comedy routine, what the audience witnessed was an aging man picking himself apart. It was funny at first but the longer the skit went, the stranger it got. Greenstein was opening himself up to the scrutiny of his audience. It was a sad story but there were glimmers of hope.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Snippet from my review: Amidst the plethora of subjects and varying themes, one centrifugal element stands out all throughout the narrative. From the onset, the prevailing theme was survival; even Mitchell herself acknowledged that it was the novel’s heart. She was once quoted saying, “What makes some people come through catastrophes and others, apparently just as able, strong, and brave, go under? It happens in every upheaval. Some people survive; others don’t. What qualities are in those who fight their way through triumphantly that are lacking in those that go under? I only know that survivors used to call that quality ‘gumption.’ So I wrote about people who had gumption and people who didn’t.”

Glory by No Violet Bulawayo

Snippet from my review: Beyond Destiny, the book was populated by anthropomorphized characters who were fleshed out of real-life figures. The Old Horse was a representation of Robert Mugabe while Dr. Sweet Mother was Grace Ntombizodwa Mugabe, the former first lady. Tuvy, on the other hand, was inspired by the former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa. The ouster of Mnangagwa was the primary driver for the military coup that led to Mugabe’s ouster in 2017. Interestingly, Mnangagwa’s nickname, Ngwena, is a Nguni surname which means crocodile. His faction of war veterans would be referred to as Team Lacoste. With the perpetuity of corruption, the nickname was, ironically, fitting.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Who has not heard of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote? It is one of the most studied and most fabled works of Spanish literature. The book is also considered one of the earliest Spanish novels. The novel features a horse named Rocinante who was essentially an integral character in the titular Don Quixote’s adventures. Rocinante was so popular that he has become an emblem of Western literary culture, in the same breath as the book’s very popular and very eccentric main character.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

Traveling all over Middle Earth will be very tedious. Thankfully, most of the characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s timeless literary phenomenon The Lord of the Rings Trilogy had their own horses. Legolas, for instance, was carried by Arod. Gandalf the White, meanwhile, navigated every nook and cranny of Middle Earth astride Shadowfax. Other horses in the epic book include Roheryn, the horse Aragorn rides through the Paths of the Dead and onto the Pelennor Fields; Snowmane, the horse of King Théoden; and Asfaloth, Glorfindel’s horse.