When Katie Wakes by Connie May Fowler

The book I read is a memoir written by Connie May Fowler and is called When Katie Wakes. I'm glad I chose this book to read because it was certainly an easy book to get into and I didn't want to set it down at any time.

Throughout this book, Fowler writes as though she's telling the man she lives with everything. All the thoughts she had about him and how he made her feel. She also talks about her past, with her parents, as well as her new job and attempting to escape him.

In this intriguing book, Fowler tells her story about when she was only twenty-six years old and living with a verbal and physical abuser who was thirty years older than she was. He would disappear for days, first wiping out her bank account and come back without any explanation or apologies. When this horrible man would get upset he would take it out on Fowler, so, at the beginning of the book, she got a puppy.

Showing up at a run-down farm with skinny kids running around and a man on the porch who runs the place, she wanted to get out of there, and fast. As soon as she saw the only black puppy, she picked it up and sped away. The puppy's name was then called Katie and protected Fowler as well as gave her hope.

At one point of the book, Fowler gets so sick that she is admitted into the hospital for thirty days. The man that she's "with" is gone during this time, as it is at least the fifth time he is "working on something big". This man doesn't pay for anything, as it is that he doesn't have a job, so it's not exactly a surprise to Fowler when she comes home to an eviction notice nailed to the door. That was how it was for most of the book

While reading When Katie Wakes, I thought that Fowler had the most courage in the world. Most people, or at least I think, would give up all hope, think that they wouldn't be able to escape from their abusers. I think that more than anything, Katie was the one that gave Fowler the self-confidence she deserved as well as the nerve to get away from the man that continuously knocked her down.

Something that I loved about this book was that Fowler would jump back into the past at a time that her father would beat on her mother or when her mother would go out looking for her dad when he didn't come home for days. All in all, I really enjoyed reading this book. I would recommend this book for anyone who thinks that there is hope for anyone that is in a difficult situation.

The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed

Personally, it was difficult for me to read this whole article by Mary Wollstonecraft. But what I got out of it was that she believes that women deserve a right to an education and should be treated just as men are. That both sexes were made equally and should be treated as such. What I liked about the article is that throughout it, Wollstonecraft stayed on the same topic and continued with what Rousseau had said in a previous article or book. Also, because she stayed on the same or similar topic(s), I agreed with most of the points she made when she dissagreed with Rousseau's statements. When Wollstonecraft included, "Rousseau declares that a woman should never...feel herself independent..." I completely thought that was unreasonable. Even though this article was written in the 1700s, I was still shocked by the things that Rousseau would state about women. Why shouldn't women have the right to be indepenent?
I give Wollstonecraft much credit for writing this article because I can't imagine that it wasn't frowned upon in that time for a woman to write about what she thought was right. Although I enjoyed reading this article, I felt like the author rambled on. I thought her sentances were well thought, but I also think that she could've shortened them much more. Altogether, this was a great article in my opinion and I'm glad that the author stood up for what she thought was right or she thought needed to be said. Do we not need more female leaders in not only the present, but the future?

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

In the article, Is Google Making Us Stupid, Nicholas Carr first points out that he felt like his brain was being taken somehow beacuse of the internet--how we can now just skim through articles and think that we know everything there is to know about a certain topic. When I read this article I was really drawn to it because he talked about not only one person that had their own opinion about this, but at least five. Carr explained that people aren't even reading full stories anymore, or can't hold their focus through a whole story. For example, Bruce Friedman stated, "I now have almost totally lost the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print." Not only can Friedman not hold a focus in print, but the web as well. Any more than four paragraphs, Friedman also stated, he skims through.
Carr also mentioned that we are probably reading more than people were in the 1970's or 1980's, although it's not the right 'way' of reading. In today's world our reading is through texting and emails, not storybooks or novels.
I think that we should encourage people to read storybooks and articles because I don't think that people should skim through articles or books but actually get into the writing. I agree with Carr throughout the whole article because I think that although Google is helpful, I don't think that everyone should rely on it completely.