The End as Come!

Finally the end! I have read a lot of books but I have never been so excited to have one be over more than I am to have this one end.  The last chapter of The Shallows is where Nicolas Carr summarizes everything he mentions in the book and ties it all together. Now for the most part I agreed with Carr was saying throughout the book, but at times I felt as though he was forcing his opinion on the reader. There were other times where I could not have disagreed more with Carr, however like I said I agreed with him on most of the things that he said. The one thing that I agreed most with was that the internet makes it a lot harder to focus on just one thing at a time. Even as I write this blog post, I am constantly looking at my Facebook and e-mail. I find it hard to sit and just write this blog post without checking to see if someone as updated anything or if I have received an email.

                The one thing I thought was interesting about the way Carr wrote was how he would say am opinion but it would come off as a fact, so the reader did not question it. By doing this, I know I was not quite sure at times whether or not Carr liked the internet or wanted to get rid of it all together. There were also parts of the book when he would mention certain things, mostly things with monkeys; I did not understand why he needed to had such things.

                As I had mentioned in the first sentence, this book is finally over! This book as to have been the hardest book to get through. Every time I picked it up I instantly wanted to put it down. Now most of the time when this happens with a book I never take anything from it, but with this book, although it was a pain to read, there are definitely things that I will take out of it. For instance I will take out how much society has changed because of the internet. More and more people read things on the internet rather than read them in a newspaper or book. This fact concerns me, I do not think that we should ever get rid of books, and the way we are moving now, books will be gone in a 100 years or so. Another thing that I will take away is that the internet will only change us as much as we let it change us.

                I liked the way Nicolas Carr ended the book. A nice summary of all his ideas wrapped together. Sometimes in books the author leaves some ties untied, but Carr is able to make sure that all of his loose ends are no longer loose and the reader knows how all of his ideas tie together. I liked that the most about the book, but I will not lie and tell you that I will never open this book again.

Maggie Hartrey