Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

The non-fiction book I chose to read was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. It is about the author's experiences in the city of Savannah, Georgia in the 1980's. The way it was written seemed like a fiction book, and it was really interesting! Berendt was a journalist from New York, and he started visiting Savannah a lot. The main event in the book was the trial of Jim Williams, a really rich guy who shot someone named Danny in his house. The trial was to decide whether Williams planned to kill Danny or if he shot him out of self-defense, which is what Williams claimed.Williams takes Berendt to a graveyard where he asks a lady to do voodoo to help him win his trial. It was quite bizarre.


There are a lot of things besides the trial that add to the entertainment value of this book. Berendt becomes friends with a man named Joe Odom moves into deserted houses and throws parties 24/7, literally. He also becomes friends with a drag queen named Chablis, and she is really funny. The society in Savannah was very strange; it seems a lot like how I imagine the Old South. The city was really divided from the rest of the country, it seemed. Everyone gossiped a lot about each other. There was also a lot of racial divisions that were brought up. I think the book gives a really good picture about what the Old South was like. It was a super good book! I liked it a lot.

Mary Wollstonecraft wouldn't have made you a sandwich.

This essay was really interesting and convincing! Mary Wollstonecraft did an excellent job of proving her point. 

She presented her ideas perfectly, especially considering the time period she lived in. Women in 1792 had fewer rights than they do today (in America, at least), so it was crucial for Wollstonecraft to not be too extreme with her ideas because people wouldn't have taken her essay seriously otherwise. She addressed that women are different from men when she said, "Let it not be concluded that I wish to invert the order of things; I have already granted, that, from the constitution of their bodies, men seem to be designed by Providence to attain a greater degree of virtue." Instead of trying to convince readers that women were equal to men, she argued that they should be given the opportunity to be educated, independent individuals. That way, they could be more than just satisfy men.

Wollstonecraft also took a very logical approach in this essay. She said, ""I wish to speak the simple language of truth, and rather to address the head than the heart." That technique made her arguments stronger; the facts she presented made her seem very credible. Wollstonecraft's writing style also made her seem credible. She obviously was very smart; I bet some men in her time wouldn't have been able to understand what she'd written. Her intelligence made her seem respectable--much more than someone "created for man."


Society has obviously changed a lot after this essay was written.  I think Mary Wollstonecraft would be happy if she saw how women were treated in America today. I'm glad that people like Wollstonecraft pushed for rights of women. I think Wollstonecraft's intelligence in itself was enough to prove that women should be given more rights and independence from men, along with the bravery it must have taken for her to stand up to social norms.

Is Google making us stupid?

I don't fully agree with Nicholas Carr's points in "Is Google Making Us Stupid," although I have to admit that in the process of creating this blog post, I was a victim to many of the Internet's distractions. Of course, I had turn on Pandora and check my Facebook before I could log into Blogger. The Internet obviously is very distracting, but I don't think it has affected the way I think or work when I'm not on the computer like Carr said. Yes, I struggle to read a complete article on a computer screen because it's so easy to jump to a more exciting website, but I don't have a problem reading something out of a book or newspaper, unless it's realllllllllly boring. I don't think the Internet has changed the way my brain works. 

On the other hand, the Internet has been available to me for my whole life. If I'd grown up without the Internet like Carr did, maybe I would have noticed a difference in the way I think. While I don't think I've become totally prone to distractions because of the Internet, that could just be because my mind has never worked any other way. 

Overall, I think the Internet is a good thing. Sure, it might make us seem a bit lazy because it's almost too simple for us to access information, but I'm not sure I'd ever end up finding out some things if I didn't Google search for them. If something pops into my head that I want to know, I can look it up right away. Otherwise I might forget before I get a chance to look up an answer to my question. While the Internet has definitely changed our lives, I don't think it's changed our brains.