I don't do negative reviews, but... Caveat Emptor

I recently saw some slick ads for a newly published horse book -- I won't mention the title (for reasons you'll hopefully grasp), but  it's being marketed as a groundbreaking, controversial, and unblinking exposé on the horse world. It's geared to the newly minted equestrian -- adult riders, parents of kinds who are begging for lessons, etc.  Intriguing, huh? I was interested enough to investigate. I found some online excerpts from the book, and went through a healthy sampling of passages. Here's a very brief excerpt that seems pretty representative. The author is giving advice to a newbie parent/adult rider going out to visit lesson barns before making a final choice.

BEFORE THE DRIVE
  Before you go, think about your appearance. You are being judged the minute you pull into the driveway. This can work as an advantage at first if you have a very nice, expensive car. You will get treated much better than if you pull in with a beater. (Yes, rich people drive beaters and poor people drive Porsche's [sic]; however, barns and trainers can be much more superficial than that.


If you have two car options, try to pick middle of the road. You are being sized up -- jewelry, clothing, vehicle, everything is being analyzed to see how much money you have. The less they think you have, the less important they perceive you, but the less chance you have of being screwed (right away).

Really? Whose reality is this? 
 To me, this passage says a lot more about the author than the subject. Is everyone really out to "screw" the newbie equestrian? I think not. In my experience, barn managers/instructions don't pay that much attention to the circumstances of new lesson clients -- they're busy people.  I suspect they are too wrapped up in their daily work to care about the means of conveyance for every prospective client. Besides, an expensive car is no guarantee that bills will be paid on time (in fact, the reverse may be true).   

This "car talk" passage stuck out as both off-the-wall AND off-putting AND inaccurate. The rest of the book reads like a last minute term paper, something rattled off and never revisited for accuracy/grammar/clarity. In a section entitled "Buying a Bridle" the advice offered is to  get the $40 over the $400 bridle because "they work just as good [sic]." That's it.

Hmmm. What about durability?  Safety? Suitability for the discipline? Fit? Proper grammar?  I could  go to a stable and ask any 17-year-old barn rat about buying tack--they could tell me the same, if not more, than is offered here. 

Everyone feels they "have a book in them." A lucky few, like The Dressage Chronicles write Karen McGoldrick, really do. I've seen first-hand the amount of work, and research, and effort real writers put into their successful novels, and how-to guides, and works of scholarship. The best writers agonize over each passage. They fact check. In general, they struggle to make their book the best of its genre.

It toasts my buns a little to see our sport represented in this way. It's a  tiresome to see opinion-presented-as-fact, targeted to the least experienced/most unsuspecting in our sport, with significant grammatical errors never mind review/revision. The bulk of the effort here seems to be in the marketing.

Writing, and books, and horses are all important to me. Even gifted writers edit and labor over their craft. Nothing like that happening here, and reading what's passing for expert advice just hit a nerve.

Caveat Emptor!