Hi, welcome to the next "I read my best
friend's favorite book"
reading vlog. I'm not necessarily sure
how the structure of
this reading vlog will go because the
best friend in question this time does
not have an online
presence that is like in the public
sphere, and so I don't know whether she
will be
interested in being in this vlog or I
doubt she'll sit down for a whole
interview like Udy did,
but either waym we're gonna get some good
content out of this, so stay tuned. First
a little bit about the best friend--
the best friend of this video
is named Heather; she is my,
like, housemate, I guess?
This year, we live in the same
apartment, and last year we roomed
together.
I met heather a couple of years ago; I
met my boyfriend in the end of
first year. We weren't dating yet, but
we
were friends, and I was introduced to
his friend group, and Heather was a part
of that friend group.
And then, as I said, we've been living
together for the last couple of years,
like
last year and then this coming year,
we'll be living together.
A little bit about Heather: Heather is a
classics
genius, she is a language-learning
prodigy, she is into Italian right now--
she's really learning Italian, it's part
of--one of her majors, her other major is
classics.
She's great at Latin, great at Greek. She
is from North Carolina, originally,
and she has recommended me books
before.
She recommended me The Song of Achilles
and Circe in the same year and I
read them--or the same academic year. I
read them both,
and I gave them both five stars, so... So
far, our tastes align
with every recommendation she's given me
and I'm hoping that will be the case
with this one. Since reading those books,
though,
Heather has gotten a new favorite book
and I am--that is the book that I'm
reading for this vlog,
and that book is Where the Crawdads Sing.
This is the deluxe edition of Where the
Crawdads Sing. It has beautiful art,
amazing pages, this gold edging... we love
it. Heather and I actually share this
book; we both
like paid for half of it because it was
expensive,
but worth it. Heather also loves the
content inside this book--
this is one of her favorite books ever,
now,
and I'm really excited to
give it a try. I am already 100 pages in
it--into it and
so far, so good. I'm really enjoying it so
far; the nature--
the nature descriptions are very
atmospheric and just very lyrical and
beautiful and
I really like the stories we're watching. 
This is a two--this is a dual timeline
story;
one is about a girl who grows up in a
marsh and
one is about a murder that happens near
the march
when she--when she is in her early 20s. So
my goals with this reading vlog
are to first--see whether Heather and I's
reading tastes align.
I want to see if they further align
past The Song of Achilles and Circe and see if Where the Crawdads Sing is a five star
book for me as well. And then my second
goal
is to see why Heather likes this book so
much--see if I can find
pieces of her personality into it. I know
that this book takes place in North
Carolina;
Heather loves beautiful writing--this
book has that.
She loves beautiful descriptions of
North Carolina and she knows the nature
presented in this book, since this book
takes place in North Carolina, and I'm
just excited to
see why she likes this book so much...
so yeah.
Let's get reading!
[Music]
Where the Crawdads Sing update--I am
about
200 pages--I'm just over 200 pages in.
It's still really good, it's a lot
about like
loneliness, like a deep, like a bone-deep
loneliness that just continues and the
things it drives you to do
and the people that you accept in your
life once like
that's there. I really don't know what
else to say about it; it's not a book
that I'm having
a ton of thoughts about, like I--I'm
enjoying it every time I pick it up and
I love being back in the atmosphere of
the swamp,
but it's also in many ways like a hard
book to read, like it's a little bit
disturbing
at times with the things that
Kya accepts from people because she doesn't know any
better.
This book also continually goes into
directions that I
am not expecting it to go in with
certain love interests and people to
come in and out of Kya's life.
I'm also really interested in the
mystery that's going on; there's a murder-
mystery happening
with the backdrop of this young girl
coming-of-age alone
and I really have no idea how the murder-
mystery is gonna go down, like I really
have no
clue at all. I have ideas, but I don't
know.
I'm trying to figure out what to say
about it; I don't have anything else.
Heather, do you have any thoughts?
H: Have you said anything about chase? S: a little, I--
haven't
talked anything about--said anything
about Chase specifically but I think
that Chase
is an interesting--first of all, tie from
the murder-mystery
aspect of this book and also into the
past
I really like the interaction between
the two timelines, the dual timelines
with the--
the like, something will be mentioned in
the present-day timeline with the murder-
mystery and that thing or that
person will come up in the past timeline
and it's interesting to figure out how
they're all connected.
Chase is--I don't like him.
If you've read it and you know who I'm
talking about--I don't like him. But to me,
he's really a product of
who lonely--how--the sort of people lonely
people are willing to accept in their
lives,
like it's not her fault, it's not her
fault that he is the way that he is,
but she doesn't know any better because
she doesn't have
anyone else, and it's sad. I don't hate
all of who he is, but I do hate
quite a bit of his actions. Anyways,
that's Where the Crawdads Sing. We've had
so many title drops;
it's very lyrical and beautiful.
And I'll update
when I have more thoughts.
So I finished it and
it did not do anything that I was
expecting.
The ending was amazing, the ending was
my favorite thing, and made me see the
book in like an
entirely different light, and
I talked to Heather about it a little
bit and like the things that it was--
and she talked--told me about some things
that I missed, like with the clues and
everything, where I was--
I just didn't see them and how they
could tie, like how the two
timelines tied together, and then the
ending!
I just--I--I can't say anything, like I
cannot say
anything about the ending because I
can't--I can't spoil anything. I can't
tell you really my emotions; it's just
not what I expected. I had an idea of
what this book was going to be and to an
extent it was that, it definitely
is that, like it is a coming-of-age novel,
it's very into nature, it's very
atmospheric.
It's very much about the North Carolina
marshes
and about this girl--this lonely girl
who's living in them, and kind of like
is only living with her own loneliness
and then there's this murder-mystery
aspect to it, which is the the dual plot
line thing,
and you know they connect because dual
plotline.
But it just did not do what I
thought it was going to do, and so I just
really,
really liked it a lot better. It made me--
the ending really--
I like when a book can surprise me
because I thought I had this book pegged
when I was reading, like the first half
of it--I just read the second half
in like one sitting, and
it just didn't do what I thought and so
I had some theories and
none of them were right and so I'm--I'm--
I'm
just really happy with this. I love an
ending that is just different and
surprising and shocking in a way?
I don't know, I just like to get some
emotions, it doesn't have to be
anything like super gritty or whatever
like I'm not saying that,
so like when I'm saying "shocking" don't
think that, but like
I really like where we ended with this
book, and it made me
like the book a lot more. I'm--I already
liked this book, I enjoyed it every time
i picked it up, but
because it was able to bring out some
different emotions in me,
i enjoyed it a lot more and I'm still
figuring out what I'm going to rate it.
I'm still figuring out where I stand
fully with
like a rating. It was like a four star
book for the whole thing;
now it might be a little higher because
of that ending,
maybe, I don't know, I'll have to sit on
it for a while and I guess
you will find out in my wrap up, maybe?
Maybe at the end of this vlog? I don't
know and I have some exciting news--
I thought the vlog was going to end here--
it's not ending--
Heather has agreed very graciously to
talk about me,
no-- talk about me? Talk to me about this
book.
Tomorrow--we're going to film it tomorrow
morning and the vlog will be up
later that day and we're gonna--
we're gonna talk a little bit and I have
a feeling we're gonna get into some
spoilers and so this is the last part of
the vlog that will be spoiler-free,
maybe I'll definitely put spoiler
warnings
like later in the vlog for you to like
leave
if you haven't read this book, but if you
want to hear Heather and I's thoughts,
stay tuned and we're going to talk about
it then. But
yeah, I finished it, it was really good,
I'm really excited
about this, I'm excited this experiment
was a success
and I'm gonna talk about like,
you know, some of the, you know, the things
that relate more to my goals with this
reading vlog with Heather tomorrow
and some specifics about the books so I
will see you in the next clip.
Hi, so I'm here to explain.
So Heather and I just filmed the chat
that I promised you for this vlog
about Where the Crawdads Sing, but we
talked for way too long
and I have 40 minutes of raw footage to
edit,
and so that can't go on the end of this
vlog, so I'm just gonna post this vlog as
is and you can expect the chat with
Heather
coming very soon, but it is coming. We
will have
a spoiler free and spoiler section of
the chat, but it's mostly gonna be
spoilers.
So if you haven't read this book, I 
highly recommend reading that and then
coming back to that video but
yes, this has been a vlog thank you for
following this journey of me reading
my best friend's favorite book and I
will see you in the next video with said
best friend. Bye :)
