Readers Up #41: Saratoga Headhunter
Well, here we are again. Here is New York's Capital Region in the midst of the Saratoga meet, and also the midst of a stormy, fiery, uncertain summer. The...
Readers Up #40: 2021 Yearbook
Dear readers, If you're interested in revisiting the long version of the content listed above (...why), please find .mobi, .pdf, and .epub files here. If you...
Readers Up #39: Racetrack Rogues
It appears we've reached the end of the line. (I'm searching for the appropriate racing term and coming up blank, which feels like a sign from an impassive...
Readers Up #38: My Suffolk Downs
Is all racing writing elegiac? More and more the distance from the track is wearing on me. Sure, Belmont is open, but despite what every decision-maker above...
Readers Up #37: A Day at the Races
It had to be you, I sing to my library copy of Barry Gifford's 1988 racetracker Bible A Day at the Races. Yep--that Barry Gifford, of Sailor and Lula fame,...
Readers Up #36: Summer Reading
I admit, I'm feeling both lazy about and overwhelmed by reading this summer. Waterlogged, maybe; Albany is getting a heavy dose of regular rain--perfect...
Readers Up #35: Beautiful Horseflesh
June in my part of New York isn't deep summer, but Albany has had enough 90+ days so far this year to make me think longingly of home. Tampa's sun-baked...
Readers Up #36: Betting on a Duke's Heart
The trope of the young girl flipping frenetically through a racy novel to get to the good bits is well-established. As a young girl myself, I even...
Readers Up #35: Sports Movie Double Feature
Well! The Kentucky Derby is this weekend. Contrary to Pandemic Time, it's even happening when it should be. Here's a bad tip from me: just play Soup and...
Readers Up #34: Perestroika in Paris
American adult readers sometimes seem wary of animal stories, as two questions near the top of the Goodreads page for Perestroika in Paris attest: What age...
Readers Up #33: Freebie February
2021 sure is a whole 'nother "second verse same as the first," huh? Despite the demands of my working life being the same as they've ever been--except more...
Readers Up #32: Runaway Alex
2020 was a big year for all of us, in terms of discovering the limits of our reclusiveness and expanding our sourdough boundaries (literally), but an...
Readers Up #31: 2020 Yearbook
Well. You know. I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. Readers Up: Year Two compilation to come in January--expect your copy via this newsletter before...
Readers Up #30: Salute Your Shorts
Although my relieved Tumblr friends might think otherwise, I have actually been following The State of the American Jockey this year. Ferrin Peterson tearing...
Readers Up #29: Bare Knuckles & Saratoga Racing
I'm not a New Yorker. Sometimes I wonder if I could be, but the Rubicon of bolting through yellow lights has yet to be crossed and I'm really bad at...
Readers Up #28: Good Things Come
As much as I enjoy intellectualizing everything under the sun, sometimes I just wanna like a thing. Sometimes I want to feel good! Remember feeling good?...
Readers Up #27: 10 Lb. Penalty
Ah, you are thinking, at last! A Dick Francis novel, the obvious choice, why did it take so long? Well, for one thing, Dick Francis does not write about US...
Readers Up #26: The Sport of Kings and the Kings of Crime
First, the frisky two-year-old Thoroughbred in the room: yes, it is August. But is it, though? Is it not, spiritually, March 148th? I feel a little bad for...
Readers Up #25: Central Florida Thoroughbreds
As of this writing, I've spent the better part of three weeks trying to cyberbully the New York Racing Association into acting like something other than...
Readers Up #24: Backstretch Girls
A Wednesday newsletter? Feels funky! Then again, time has been revealed as being an agreed-upon fiction, so who knows--maybe it’s actually Friday. Anyway......
Readers Up #23: Racing Manhattan
Growing up in a place that wasn't New York City pre-Lin Manuel Miranda, I absorbed the Hollywood notion that NYC is the center of the universe. Of course,...
Readers Up #22: Above It All
The curse of interesting times! Spring seems to be the season for scandal; as I was writing last March’s edition on Headless Horsemen, Santa Anita’s...
Readers Up Year One
Hey folks, She's here! A few weeks ago I decided to compile the first year of newsletters into an e-book, mostly because the complete TinyLetter archive is...
Readers Up #21: Racing Romance Roundtable
The three Rs? Tired: reading, writing, 'rithmetic. Wired: a roundtable of racing and romance! By now, hopefully everyone's well-apprised of my position on...
Readers Up: Giveaway
Dear readers, now that we're firmly on the other side of 2019, how about... an opportunity for free stuff? Some of you may know that in addition to this...
Readers Up #20: On Swift Horses
From the liner notes to my ongoing collaborative art concept with Jessica Chapel, The Secret Life of the American Racegoer: “[The term terrain vague] made me...
Readers Up #19: 2019 Yearbook
2019 was... a year. I think that's the kindest thing most of us would say about it: it sure was a year that progressed through time in a linear manner! If...
Readers Up #18: The Scorpio Races
Horses are a staple of speculative fiction; iconic author Judith Tarr has an entire column devoted to the fact. They appear as fairy mounts and sometimes...
Readers Up #17: Eclipse
You may have noticed that Thoroughbred people are obsessed with class. A Grade 1-winning horse running in a Grade 2 race is undergoing a drop in class. A...
Readers Up #16: The Jockey Poems
Horse racing is a sport for aesthetes. The vignettes and tableaux of a racetrack, the poses that its actors tend to fall into, the dizzying resolution of...
Readers Up #15: Making Her Mark
Did I just read a Renee Dahlia romance for issue 11 of ye old newsletter? Yes. Am I about to talk about the new one, Making Her Mark, right now? Yes! It’s my...
Readers Up #14: Saratoga Journal Club
There are four seasons in New York: autumn, winter, spring, and Saratoga. In the grand scheme of horse racing, a fair amount of text has been devoted to the...
Readers Up #13: Sir Barton
“Turf writers might have had short attention spans,” Jennifer S. Kelly quips in her racing biography Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown, “but they...
Readers Up #12: A Tale of Two Fan Guides
2001 was a banner year for author Betsy Berns: not only did she have a book entitled Win, Place, and Show: An Introductory Guide to the Thrill of...
Readers Up #11: Merindah Park
“Earnest on main” is, in social media parlance, pretty much my brand. Irony is fucking exhausting; how much of your early twenties did you lose to...
Readers Up #10: The Lady is a Jock
There are truisms in any community--chestnuts tossed out at intervals, increasingly predictable as familiarity grows. A race is 90% horse and 10% jock. Pound...
Readers Up #9: Southbound
Gambling! I don’t really get it. Now you may be thinking to yourself, oh Diana, I have some bad news for you, but fear not. I, a veteran of several terrible...
Readers Up: Housekeeping
Housekeeping. Stall-mucking? Anyway, a few items of business. First, thank you for being here! The number of people interested in reading along about...
Readers Up #8: Headless Horsemen
I’m always surprised that there’s not a blind gossip site for horse racing devotees. A significant chunk of comment sections on Blood-Horse and Paulick...
Readers Up #7: I Dedicate This Ride
Young and old point at me and their eyes say hero. They probably never heard of Austin Curtis or other slaves who did more than what I do a hundred years ago...
Readers Up #6: The Sure Thing
Let’s get this out of the way up front. Horseplaying is witchcraft. There’s a famous Aleister Crowley quote. You probably know it (why are you reading this...
Readers Up #5: Pretty Penny Farm
My sole criterion for this newsletter is both an inch wide and a fathom deep: for a book to be considered, it must feature the racetrack in some way. The...
Readers Up #4: No Easy Trip
One of my favorite Millennial measuring sticks is D.A.R.E. You know, Drug Abuse Resistance Education? Love that shit. My copy of King of the Wind has a...
Readers Up #3: Out of the Clouds
I like horror movies. I especially like body horror, not least because while in college I found it exhilarating to write papers for Victorian lit seminars...
Readers Up #2: King of the Wind
So maybe I was destined to love this sport. Girls inclined to horse literature as children usually have a favorite Marguerite Henry novel, and it’s usually...
Readers Up: Welcome!
If you hit Subscribe, it's likely you're interested in racing literature--maybe equine literature as a whole, but specifically the Sport of Kings. I've mused...
Readers Up #1: The Head and Not the Heart
There's a lot to love about Natalie Keller Reinert's first Alex and Alexander story, but one line struck me exactly where I live. Oh, I can't live without...