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.
That sounds really interesting! I know that I always have a hard time finding a non-fiction book that is entertaining to read, but once I found a book that was non-fiction, but felt like it was a fiction book, I knew I would like it. It's also weird to think that these things actually happened, because when I read my book I felt like it was fiction and then I thought about it and realized that this stuff really did happen.
ReplyDeleteThis does sound like a good book! The voodoo part seems like it would be rather weird, but I guess it was part of the "Old South" as you put it. It seems like this book was set in the stereotypical Georgia atmosphere, and obviously racial divisions had to be a part of that. Overall, this does sound like an interesting read, and maybe I'll get around to it soon. :)
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the book gave a very stereotypical view of the south. Sure things like that much have gone on, but to characterize the whole southern half of our nation as such isn't right either.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a very interesting book that shared many opinions of what people believed the old south was like. It is interesting that people always have opinions of each other, sometimes stretched from the truth. I also have to agree with you that the best nonfiction books are the ones that almost seem fictional.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a good book! I was going to read this one originally.It sounds kind of crazy though, especially when you think about how it's actually a non-fiction book.
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