Who would I be?

If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?

Great question. I knew my answer pretty quickly. If I could be a character in a book or movie, I’d be Kya from Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. It’s my second favorite book, as I said in my book report.

A crawdad

Sure, Kya has lots of challenges. But she gets to spend lots and lots of time by herself looking at plants and classifying them. And she gets to be a famous author but not have to deal too much with the annoying parts of being famous. Mostly I just love the life she leads, the peace she finds in nature, and her acceptance of who she is, even though she’s not “standard.”

Yep, I could live in her world happily. Since it’s not possible, I’ll just have to re-read the book soon. I liked the movie fine, but I can slowly savor Owens’s words if I’m reading. She writes like I think. That’s a magical feeling.

I’ll write more ranch tales later.

Book Report: Where the Crawdads Sing

Spoiler: Master Naturalists will LOVE it.

Suna Kendall

Here’s one of those quirky facts about me that I’m not sure where it came from: I strongly resist jumping on the bandwagon of the latest “popular item,” whether it’s music, types of cars, clothing fads (no one has ever seen my bare midriff in public) decorating styles (“a nice, bright white”), and most assuredly, books.

Oh no, everyone’s reading it. It has to be smarmy.

So, when I was first encouraged to read Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens, I resisted. I kept thinking it would be one of those motivational books like The Secret or Chicken Soup for the Soul or that book about the shed…oh, The Shack. I figured, if everyone was reading it, snobby intellectual elitest Suna had probably read all the original source material.

That’s a bit harsh. I admit to not being fond of most books with mass appeal. But, the person who recommended Where the Crawdads Sing to me is also an intellectual elitist, and it’s a novel, so how could I have already read the source material? Oh, I know, it’s probably all formulaic and full of poor attempts at regional accents, with too many big words where small ones will do. Yeah. And it’s in Reese Witherspoon’s book club. Ew…

Continue reading “Book Report: Where the Crawdads Sing”