Hey everybody, welcome back to my channel. I'm
Farrah, and today's the start of a new vlog, I'm outside on my morning walk, and I'm a
little out of breath - I've been truckin' it up this hill, but I just wanted to share
with you that I am hearing the sounds of the first spring birds coming back to the area. Every
time I hear them for the first time, it makes me so excited. They're really early though. Today is
February 27th and it's definitely far from Spring, but I hear...in the background
, some red winged
blackbirds, which, they're always like a good sign that Spring is here, so I'm really excited
to hear them. Yeah, just wanted to pop on, I'm going to finish with my walk. I am finishing
two books right now, I hope to done very soon with them, the first is Fledgling by Octavia Butler
and the second one is Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier and I'll talk about the a little bit more when I
get back, but I just wanted to share the Spring birds with you, it's supposed to be pretty wa
rm
this week. We're having such a warm winter; it's really unusual for us, but you know what? I'll
take it, March can be hit or miss when it comes to warm weather and snow, so we'll see. But just
wanted to welcome you to the vlog. :) {piano music} So, it looks like it did snow again as you can see. And it makes me so happy because
this time of year, as we get into March, each snow storm that we have...I think...maybe this is going
to be the last one. So I'm really glad it snowed at least on
e more time so I can come outside and
enjoy the beautiful woods and the creek here in the woods, because once Spring comes, I really
don't come back out here anymore. I unfortunately live in one of the highest tick populated
states, so the ticks are a real issue for us, so I just try to keep myself safe....but...don't
have to worry about that today. {relaxing guitar music} Hey guys, just checking in. So I ended up finishing Fledgling yesterday and that book
was...is not for everybody...I'm
just going to say that...it's not a book for everybody. It was
a very, very interesting story. I think that, uh...yeah, I think I'm going to save my thoughts
for my wrap-up, because I gotta sort through them, but I will say, I did enjoy it, I
thought the writing was "ok"..it, for me though, it was a huge step down from
Kindred. Kindred was the first Octavia Butler I read and Fledgling was, I think the final book
that she wrote and it just...it was ok, it was ok, I mean, I did like the vampi
re elements, I thought
the world building was really, really great, um, I'm a vampire girlie for life so I did enjoy
that part. There was some really interesting discussion about power plays and kind of power
reversals, but there was a section in the book, one of the main elements of the book was really
hard for me to swallow, so I will get into that a little bit in my wrap-up, but I did finish that. I
am now about 60% through Rebecca, really enjoying this, it was a very slow start to begin
with, I
will, I will say that and as I'm reading along, I kind of was like "wow, a lot of people
raved about this book, but it's pretty slow, it's slow-going", but now, at about the 50% mark,
like things are picking up and the psychological thrilling aspects are coming together and I'm
really enjoying it, like I read so late last night. I didn't want to put it down, so I'm hoping
to get through Rebeca pretty quickly. Yesterday, I also started The Mountains Sing by Nguyen, I'm
going to say
her name wrong, it's Nguyen Phan Que Mai, I think, um, this is a Vietnamese author and
this book is about a multi-generational journey, about the, what it was like to be just an
average person in the Vietnam war, told from the Vietnamese people's perspective. Really
great narrator, I'm loving her narration so far, and the story starts out with a ton of action.
You're drawn right into these characters, beautiful writing and I am totally enjoying this
so far. So I'll be working on that for a
udio, that one, and Rebecca and then, I think, and I'm
also going to be continuing to work on Cleopatra. So that's just a quick update I wanted to share
with you guys and I will talk to you guys once I've read a bit more through the books. Good
morning everyone, I just you, you can probably hear the cow in the background. It is such a
beautiful morning. I'm out on my walk before work. I'm starting to walk more before work now that
it's lighter out. It's just so different. It's so pretty and
peaceful and everything, but it's so
...I don't know if you can see it on the camera, but the snow is sparkling. It's so pretty. Let's
see if..it's like..it's so flaky. It's a very icy, frosty morning. It's just probaby not doing it
justice, but it's so beautiful. I don't know. Do you guys still have snow where you live? We
still have it. {nature sounds, birds singing} Alright, just a quick little chit-chat, um..I
forgot my microphone, so I'm pointing the camera away from me so I can hold
it close to
my mouth while I'm talking, but just wanted to give you a really quick update. Rebecca is
going really, really well. It's definitely a slower read than I anticipated and it took
a while for the action to start happening, but I did, I have been enjoying it definitely all
throughout the journey of reading the book and I think that the writing is really, really nice. I'm
enjoying Daphne de Maurier's writing a lot, she's really creating a really good gothic atmosphere
despite the b
eauty of Manderlay and, you know, the beautiful summer that the novel is taking place in
and I think that she's done such a great job with the character of the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers
and every time the heroine is in a scene with her, it's really ..like..it's good, it's really
well-written. It gives you this eerie sense, which I think was really well done and we just
reached a point in the novel where there's been like some really interesting information that was revealed
and I thought..t
hat was surprising to me, I did not see that coming at all, and so, now I'm just
really invested in it and I pick it up whenever I can and yeah, I'm probably about 75% through
so hopefully I will finish it very soon. Really, really liking it so far, it's just like, I don't
know, it's so vivid. Like her..the images in my mind while I'm reading it are so vivid, and I hope
that I...I think I'm going to watch the movie when I'm done reading the book because, it's just, it's
really good. So the
other book I'm listening to on audio, this one is The Mountains Sing, it's
either The Mountains Sing or The Mountain Sings, one or the other, but this book is beautiful.
Oh my gosh. So, it's set in Vietnam; it's told from the perspective of a Vietnamese family, a
grandmother and her (granddaugher) and it has two different timelines and the first timeline is set
in the 1970s during the Vietnam War and it's told through the perspective of a 13 year old girl.
Her nickname is "Guava", I think h
er real name is Huong, and she's staying with her grandmother
because her parents have gone off to the war. Her mother is a physician and her father has been
fighting in the war. So they're just trying to survive the bombings and running and surviving in
the wilderness and things like that. Then we're also going back in time to the 1930s and we're following her
grandmother who, um has her own really difficult journey. I think the grandmother's story takes
place during the...something to do
with the land and the Japanese and um, you know, just another
very difficult situation. So, right off the bat, the writing is absolutely gorgeous, I love it,
it's so beautiful and descriptive and poetic almost. This is amazing; when I think about
authors that write in a language that is not their original native language and they're still
amazing, I just get blown away by that. This is her first, I think, English novel, but I think the
author is a poet and her writing is so beautiful that I
'm going to try to see if I can find any
poetry that she's done in English. So it's just like, it's really good, I'm really enjoying it a
lot. There's a lot, a lot of Vietnamese language in it so the audio's really great hearing
the, you know, the native Vietnamese words being spoken and there's a lot of descriptions
about food, which I always love, so it's really good. I'm really enjoying both of these. I'm just
focusing on these two until I get them done and then I will move on to my Marc
h selections. But,
yeah, this is just such a beautiful morning and I, I really appreciate, you know, the sunshine we
have, we didn't get it a lot this winter and the snow, of course, makes everything beautiful. I'm
still happy that it's Winter, I'm not, you know, pining for Spring yet, like a lot of, I mean,
I will, but, I'm still good. :) {instrumental music} Alright guys, lets wrap up this vlog. I just want to say a couple of quick things.
So, I finished Rebecca. I really, really liked it
. I really liked it. Um, the second half of the book
moved much quicker. Things started happening that really got me just really into it and I couldn't
put it down at some points. I enjoyed how the rest of the story unfolded. I loved some of the
twists that happened. I liked seeing our main character kind of step into her self a little
bit more and Mrs. Davers. Again, just a great, creepy lady and I really liked her character. I
like how she, the scenes which she shared with our heroine. I
liked how it wrapped up. I liked how
the second I finished it, I wanted to go back and start re-reading it again. So yeah, the experience
of reading Rebecca really fun and I really enjoyed this book and I can see how so many of you
guys loved this book. So, um I just got back from book shopping with my sister, we celebrated
our birthday today and we treated ourselves with a little day trip and we did a few things and one
thing I really wanted to do was to visit one of my favorite bookstores
that I've been to, I've only
been to it once before, and it was so much fun to be inside a new bookstore again after so long,
at least, I don't know. It's been a long time since I've been in a bookstore and it was just
fun to see all the beautiful displays. This is a beautiful independent bookstore. I just love how
it's set up. I love the variety of books and it's just fun to go through and see everything
and I did pick out a bunch of non-fiction "environmentally type" of animal, you know,
you know
my thing, nature style books that I'll be sharing in a book haul soon, and then, after that, we went to a used
bookstore down the road and this is a second hand bookshop. I've only been to this one once before
as well and this is just such a cool bookstore. It's located inside a really old building and it
twists and turns, and it's, it looks so tiny from the outside, but once you get in, it just goes
deeper and deeper and there's all these different rooms and stuff so I had a real
ly good time just
looking through the books. I didn't spend as much time in there as I would've liked too, and I felt
a little bit overwhelmed like trying to figure out, um you know, where the books I wanted where
or what I was really looking for. I knew that I wanted to try to find a few classics or Agatha
Christie or things like that I knew that would be part of my collection anyway, so I did find a
bunch of stuff there, which I'll also share in an upcoming haul, but I just wanted to, um
say thank
you guys so much for watching, I really appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed the vlog and I will see you
guys soon. I will talk to you guys soon and thank you very much for watching. {nature sounds}
Comments