My Thoughts on "Where the Crawdads Sing"

You know that book you pick up thinking it sounds moderately interesting, but once you start reading it, it takes on a life of its own and is infinitely better than anything you could have ever imagined?  That's Where the Crawdads Sing.  This book blew every single one of my expectations out of the water and has quickly become one of my favorite books.  Just like Everything I Never Told You, it almost impossible to talk about this book without talking about spoiler; I'll leave a big warning before I start talking about anything that could potentially spoil the book for others.

Where the Crawdads Sing takes place during the 1950s in the rural marshes of North Carolina and follows the story of Kya.  Kya lives in the marshes with her family: her father, who is a World War II veteran and alcoholic, her mother and approximately five siblings (she's the youngest).  Slowly, Kya's family abandons her, all of them leaving for a hopefully better life elsewhere, until she's left with her dad, until he eventually leaves her as well.  At the age of approximately ten, Kya is left to fend for herself.

For both of my mom's book clubs (they each read this book separately a few months ago), this is where the book became completely unrealistic.  They couldn't wrap their minds around the fact that a little girl survived out in the marshes on her own, and nobody in town even noticed or did anything about it.  While I can see where they're coming from, it is, unfortunately, very possible.  Think about how many children slip through the cracks of the foster care system every single day.  Obviously, this isn't something we want to think about, as we'd like to think that the foster system does its job without any problems.  My coworker and I were talking about this.  We're both teachers, and she told me about a student she had last year.  Nobody knew that this student and her sister were living completely on their own for two months until they were about to be evicted.  Just like Kya, they went through the motions and hid the reality of their circumstances from everyone around them.  With that being said, it really didn't seem out of the realm of possibility that Kya was alone, and nobody knew any better.

Kya's childhood is only part of the story.  Interwoven with Kya's childhood and extremely unconventional upbringing, local police are trying to solve the mysterious murder of Chase Andrews, former star quarterback and all-around beloved member of the community.  Locals found his body in the marsh underneath the fire tower, and suspicion immediately turned to Kya, who the locals refer to as "Marsh Girl".  Their prejudice get the better of them as they try to figure out who killed Chase.  It's easy to figure out why they zeroed in on Kya, as she was the quintessential example of an outcast, while Chase was the quintessential example of a town superstar.  This story mostly takes a backseat to the story about Kya's childhood and upbringing, until they both converge, and the reader spends the rest of the story hooked on every word as they find out what happened to Chase and Kya.

Now that we've gotten the basics out of the way, it's time to dive a little more into the book.  Just like before, if you haven't read the book or don't want spoilers this is where you should probably stop reading.  There aren't any discussion questions for this post.

Wow, all I can say is wow.  That ending was amazing!  I definitely did NOT see that coming!  I spent the entire book completely convinced that Kya was 100% innocent, especially the way she talked to her lawyer and made it abundantly clear that she would NOT have anything to do with any plea bargain that included jail time.  I definitely knew that Chase raped her, but  I thought he was going to rape her on the top of the fire tower, and then she pushed him off in self-defense.  After that turned out to be incorrect, I thought she was going to be found guilty and executed.  I have to admit, I was so relieved when that turned out to be not true.  I read another book where something similar happened, and while the book was amazing (and the death at the end definitely helped contribute to the plot), I still didn't like it.  After Kya was found not-guilty, I was so sure she was innocent and Tate actually killed Chase for Kya (we'll talk about Kya and Tate's relationship in a bit; I absolutely loved it!).  I know that that was what Owen was going for with the chapter immediately following Kya's acquittal, and it definitely seemed plausible.

I absolutely loved Tate's relationship with Kya.  Yes, he did her wrong by leaving her to go to college, but had he actually said goodbye and explained why he had to leave her (he really did think he was acting in her own best interest), then things would have been much smoother between them.  Unlike Chase, Tate really did have Kya's best interests at heart, which is why I was so convinced he killed Chase.  I was absolutely heartbroken when Tate left Kya (although I knew he had to spread his own wings and experiencing his own life for a little while), but he always looked out for her and did whatever he could to make sure she had everything she needed.  Unlike everyone else, Tate was able to see Kya for who she really was and all the potential she had inside her.  If everyone else in town had treated her the same way, then maybe she would have had a much different life.

I also want to take a little bit of time to talk about Chase.  First of all, what a total creep!  I hate to say it, but the guy really deserved what happened to him.  He took complete advantage of a woman.  To him, she was simply another notch on his belt.  Not only that, she was an extremely exotic notch in his built, which he bragged about to his friends.  I can't believe he even got married, what woman would want him!?  On top of being able to get just about any woman he wanted in town (which he did...several times), he still had to try to rape Kya and then harass her after the fact.  Kya absolutely did the right thing killing Chase, there was no way he was going to leave her alone.  She had to do something, not only for herself, but for other women in town.  Chase was known was a womanizer, but who's the say Chase hadn't tried to or successfully raped other women over the years.  Kya refused to come forward and admit that she had been raped.  No one would have believed her in the first place.  In a way, Where the Crawdads Sing is a commentary of women's rights and how backwards the system was.  On the other hand, had this happened today, and a social outcast accused the town's golden boy of rape, would she be believed?  I'd like to say yes, but I know that the answer would most likely be no.  There's still so much work to be done when it comes to women's rights, but that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

Like I said, both of my mom's book clubs read this book, but I just read it for fun.  For that reason, I don't actually have any discussion questions for this book.  I finished the book last night, but I'm still working on processing the book.  If you have any great discussion questions you want to share, please leave them in a comment below.

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Overwhelmed

There's a meme that I see on Facebook every few months that says something to the effect of, "Being an adult means saying to yourself, 'All I have to do is get through this week then everything will be smooth sailing' every week until you die", and that's how I've been feeling so far this week.  The funny thing is, this week isn't any different from other weeks.  In fact, it could be considered somewhat easier than last week because instead of having an 8-10 page paper to write, on top of balancing grading papers and a personal life, all I had to do was read a book and write a discussion reply for grad school and grade some papers.  It sounds easy, right?  Well, it should be.  Instead, I've felt completely overwhelmed, not to mention unmotivated.  I've gotten into this really bad habit of not wanting to do any work when I get home from school, which means I'm trying to cram all my grad school work and all my teaching work into the few short hours I'm at school every day.  I really need to break that habit, but it's far easier said than done.  You see, I still live with my parents in their basement, and there's no real space for me to do work down there.  I don't have a desk or anything  I know I can work at the kitchen table, but then I get easily distracted by my parents, who spend most of their time in the family room.  I could also use the craft room upstairs (I unofficially claimed the old den as my craft room), but it literally looks like Michaels, Hobby Lobby AND Joanns Fabric all threw up in there at the same time.  I've attempted to clean up in there so many times, but it's an insanely overwhelming task.  I also need to start purging old scrapbooking supplies I know I'm not going to use, but that's a whole other discussion for another day.

There has been one beautiful reprieve this week.  I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but thank God for standardized testing.  My students were taking this progress checks of sorts this morning, which meant three hours of testing.  While they tested (and I babysat them), I got so much grading done!  Between that and the fact that my discussion post was due last night, I feel such a huge weight off my shoulders.  I know I didn't do very well on the discussion post, but I can live with a mediocre grade every once in a while.  I just couldn't get into the book.  It was about Stuart history, but it was so incredibly dry!  Than goodness I'm mostly done with this book now and only have to use it for my paper for this section in a few weeks.  With any luck, I'll be able to rely on the other books for this section and won't have to use that book too much.  One can dream.

I know in the grand scheme of things this week isn't that bad, and I am feeling a lot better about it today.  The good news is it's Thursday, I only have 20 minute classes today, and my students are writing an essay tomorrow.  This week is going to sail by.  Oh, but if my students are writing essays, that means I'm going to have to grade them.  Oh boy!

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My Thoughts On "Everything I Never Told You" and Discussion Questions

Over a year ago, my mom joined a book club, and I was intrigued and interested in joining her, but the members weren't close to my age, and life got in the way.  A few months ago, my mom joined a SECOND book club (because apparently one wasn't enough for her).  Last month, her second book club read one of her favorite books (Before We Were Yours), and she really pushed for me to read the book and come with her (it helped that it was being hosted at one of my favorite restaurants).  Well, the book seemed interesting enough, and I wanted to get my mom off my back, so I gave in.  I honestly had a blast!  This book club had a wide range of people from my age to my mom's, they actually talked about the book, and the book choices were excellent.  Needless to say, now I'm part of a book club.

I've been part of book clubs in the past.  In middle school I went to one at the local library with a friend.  After college, my best friend tried to start one up, but it mostly was an excuse for us to get together once a month and hang out.  A little while before I met my boyfriend I tried one at the local library again but wasn't a fan (most of the people were significantly older than me, and I was looking for people my age).  So, after all these experiences, I'm glad to have found a book club I actually enjoy.

I guess at this point you may have figured out that this month's book for book club was Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng, which is why I started out this post talking about my past experiences with book clubs and my general thoughts on them.  Now that that's out of the way, I can actually talk about the book.  I do want to warn you that this book is difficult to talk about without giving away spoilers (although what book is?).  So, if you haven't read the book and want to avoid spoilers, you won't want to read the entire post below.  I'll post a warning before I get into the spoilers (trust me, it'll be hard to miss).

Everything I Never Told You focuses on the Lee family, a bi-racial Chinese family living in Ohio in the 1970s.  While the main focus of the book is the death of their oldest daughter, Lydia, the book also uses flashbacks to give the reader insight into the family and how things were not as they appeared, while in the present, the family attempts to grapple with the death of Lydia and try to figure out what exactly happened to her in the first place.

First things first, it's important to note that this family is absolutely miserable.  The dad, who is the son of Chinese immigrants, is entirely focused on his children fitting in and being just like everyone else.  This means getting them the latest fads when it comes to clothes, buying books for them about how to make friends and focusing entirely on their social lives.  The mother, on the other hand, is American.  She was the top of her class and poised to go to medical school when she got pregnant and had to put all her dreams on hold.  Due to this, she decided to live vicariously through her children, or, more correctly, her oldest daughter, Lydia.  This meant that their oldest child, Nathan, was often looked over and forgotten.  This was something I found interesting, as most of the time the families focus on the oldest son, not the daughter.  This most likely stemmed from the mother's obsession with being a female doctor, and her desire to see the same for her son.  Not to mention, getting pregnant with her son was the reason she couldn't go to medical school in the first place.

As if this family weren't dysfunctional enough as is, they also had a younger daughter, Hannah.  Like her brother, Nathan, Hannah was completely unplanned and put a kibosh on her mother's plans to return to medical school.  As a result, Hannah is completely and utterly forgotten by everyone in the family, which only adds to the dysfunction.

Now, if you've made it this far and want to avoid spoilers, this is where you want to stop reading.  Even the discussion questions I post may have some spoilers, so read those at your own risk.

I'm a little strange, sometimes I can see a plot twist coming a mile away, sometimes I see it right before it happens, and sometimes I'm completely blindsided.  In the case of this book, I definitely saw it coming.  I figured that Lydia committed suicide (although it's up to interpretation if it was in fact suicide or an accident) simply because of the focus of the book.  Everything I Never Told You is more focused on the family aspect, with the police investigating her case only making brief cameos every once in a while.  This alone was a dead giveaway.  Ng focused more on the family and the events leading up to Lydia's death, telling the reader that whatever caused Lydia's death had to be somehow related to all of that instead of and outside person coming in and doing harm to Lydia.  The way Ng writes it, however, it makes it look more like it was an accident, although Lydia rowed a boat to the middle of the lake and got in the water in the middle of the night even though she knew she couldn't swim at all.  This causes the reader to wonder if she really meant to make it back to shore, or was it suicide?  I guess we'll never know.

Like I said before, I read this book for a book club.  While I did look at some discussion questions posted online, I also came up with a few of my own that I wanted to pass along in case this is a book you us for you own book club.  Please feel free to use or modify them to meet your needs!

1. Do you think Lydia really intended to make it to the dock or was it suicide?
2. Do you think Lydia's death was actually better for the family by bringing them closer together?
3. Had Lydia reached the dock, would she have actually carried out her plans to reclaim her life?
4. Why was Lydia chosen as the golden child instead of Nath?
5. What was Hannah's role in the novel?
6. How did James and Marilyn's childhoods affect their children?
7. Could better communication have saved Lydia?

Enjoy the book and let me know what you think in a comment!

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It's WIP Wednesday!

Let's start with the basics: what in the world is WIP Wednesday?  The short answer is it stands for "Work In Progress Wednesday".  The longer answer is, as always, a bit more complicated than that.  I love to do a variety of different crafts and activities (I focus on scrapbooking, coloring, knitting and cross stitching, along with covering everything I own in vinyl thanks to my Cricut).  I know, it's a lot.  In the past I've gone through phases where I become completely obsessed with one of my hobbies and burn through it really quick in a few weeks before moving on to the next one and starting the whole process all over again.  Lately, though, I've been finding more of a balance.  While most of my energy has been focused on cross stitching, I've also been reading a lot more and have a knitting project going.  I honestly haven't scrapbooked in a while, but I do color every once in a while when I find the time.

Today, I just wanted to give a brief update on my projects.  I can't go into too much detail about them, as two of them are Christmas presents for other people, but I figured it would be safe to speak in generic terms.

Ever since I started cross stitching and knitting again (I've known how to knit since high school and taught myself to cross stitch with the help of YouTube over the summer), I've tried to keep only one cross stitch and one knitting project going at a time.  For a while, this worked out great for me, until I went to my boyfriend's took out my cross stitch project and realized I didn't have my needles with me!  To make matters worse, I left my project at his house and couldn't get it back for a few days.  Since I had a lot to get done, I didn't want to waste time, so I started a second project.  I'm about halfway done with the second project and about three quarters of the way done with the first project I started.  The first project has more smaller figures to cross stitch, so it's easier to feel like I'm making progress since I can finish one or two figures in an evening (depending on how many colors are involved and how complicated it is).  As for the second project I started has much bigger shapes.  Unfortunately, it has been exceedingly difficult because most of it was one color, and it was hard to keep track of what line I was on and where I was in the project.  Thankfully, the hard part is over.  My goal is to be done with both of these projects before Thanksgiving, but I know I'll get them done long before then (it's important to be realistic though).

As for my knitting project, I'm not in as big of a rush to finish it.  Yes, it would be nice to wear during the winter months, but I also want to keep it nice looking in preparation for next year's county fair (I have a few projects I want to enter already).  I'm making this fairly simple wrap (please note, the pattern is NOT mine, but it's absolutely adorable, so I wanted to share it).  I'm keeping the color the same and everything.  The body is extremely easy to make, but I'm not entirely sure about how to do the hood.  I'm hoping my boyfriend's mom can help me with that one, as she's a wonderful and proficient knitter.  What's nice is the fact that I'm using large needles (size 17), paired with bulky yarn.  This means it will be a much easier project to finish.  I've only done a few inches in the past week or so, but I'm hoping to pick up the pace soon.  Since I don't have to be done anytime soon (unlike my other two projects), this project has been pushed to the back burner a little bit in favor of more pressing projects.  My goal is to have this one done by Christmas, as I have a much larger and more complicated one to do afterwards (another one to enter in the fair hopefully).

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Welcome to Rambling Insights!

I guess the first thing I should come out and say is that I'm incredibly impulsive.  My mom started a blog, and I blogged on and off through college, so I thought I'd copy my mom and give this a shot again.  Honestly, the timing couldn't be better.  Right now, my life is as calm as can be expected for someone who teaches middle school full time and is a part time grad student, but I know some big changes are coming up in the next few weeks and months.  I know I'll probably be the only person who reads this blog, and that's okay.  Hopefully, a few years down the road, I'll be glad I wrote everything down somewhere.  Normally that would be a journal, but I've tried journaling in the past and just didn't get into it as much.  I know I go through phases, and I get really interested in one thing and perseverate on it for a few weeks before moving on, so I expect the same with this blog.  But who knows?  I may surprise myself and actually keep it up for longer than a few weeks.  My goal is to post here at least once a week, but I also know that sometimes life gets in the way.  I feel like once a week is a good goal, and we'll see where it goes from there.  So, welcome to my rambling insights!

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