Still Alice in Crazy Challenge Connection

Nov 15, 2014 Krissy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook, 5-motherfucking-stars, pgs-300-399, cover-butterfly

I did not think I would like this book. The entire story is completely from Alice's POV and is basically her day to day life as she slowly loses her memory. So it is very repetitive at times. None of this sounded interesting to me. But thanks to a reading challenge I had to read it. Now I am so glad I did. Once I started the audiobook I could not stop listening. Watching such a strong, intelligent, happy woman slowly deteriorate was heartbreaking. The scene when she couldn't find her own bathroo ...more

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Jul 06, 2015 Lisa rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-library, library-has, 2014, 2015

Still Alice is about a 50 year old woman with a PHD who lectures and writes research and teaches. She is highly intelligent. She is happy. She is busy and has a good husband and 3 wonderful children.
Then she has memory problems and chalks them up to normal aging or hormonal/menopause related. Until she gets lost in a familiar park. Totally disoriented.
After many tests she finds out she has early onset Alzheimers.

we follow her on her journey and honestly I related to her and I felt so sad for he ...more

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Apr 26, 2013 Book Concierge rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: psychology, family, favorite, own, literary-fiction, love, concierge, strong-women, women-writers, library

Book on CD read by the author.
5***** and a ❤

Alice Howland, Ph.D., professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Harvard University, wife and mother, begins to notice that she is forgetting things. No, not just where she put her keys, but words and thoughts and directions. Still, when she’s diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease she is stunned.

The brilliance of Genova’s book is that she writes from Alice’s perspective. The reader experiences the slow decline as one daily function after anot Book on CD read by the author.
5***** and a ❤

Alice Howland, Ph.D., professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Harvard University, wife and mother, begins to notice that she is forgetting things. No, not just where she put her keys, but words and thoughts and directions. Still, when she’s diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease she is stunned.

The brilliance of Genova’s book is that she writes from Alice’s perspective. The reader experiences the slow decline as one daily function after another becomes challenging, difficult and even impossible to perform. The last third of the book is particularly poignant.

I had a very hard time with this book. My mother is in the final stages of this terrible disease. She is no longer mobile. She cannot speak and does not recognize any of her family or friends. She is just a physical shell of a person, the woman she was either locked away or perhaps completely lost to us and to herself.

Several years ago my brothers and I arranged a celebration for our parents’ 60th wedding anniversary at the assisted living facility where they then lived. Mother was still mobile and speaking (though not making much sense). She enjoyed the music and the food and the celebration. Several of her long-time friends came. One, Maria, approached me when she arrived and asked if my mother still recognized me. I said yes – but I realized suddenly that this was the first visit where she had failed to call me by the pet name she’d always used for me. Just before Maria left the party, she came up to me again and said, “Your mother recognizes love.” I took a wonderful picture of Maria and my mother at that gathering, and last year when Maria published her memoir she included that photo in her book along with several pages describing what my Mother meant to her and other young women in the community. Yes, my mother recognizes love, and I am especially glad that so many other people recognize HER love for them.

One final word about the audio version of this book. Had I been rating this based on the audio performance I would have given it only 3-stars. How I wish a professional voice-over artist had been hired to do the reading! Genova clearly believes strongly in the work and the message, but she reads with the same inflection throughout. So it is difficult to follow conversations at times because the listener cannot effectively tell which character is speaking. This is especially true early in the book when Alice isn’t so severely impaired, and her use of language matches the other speakers.

UPDATE 12Aug13
Reread this book in one day, in preparation for my F2F book club meeting. I got as much if not more out of it on this second reading. ...more

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Dec 09, 2012 Stacy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, five-stars, read-in-2014

This was an amazing book--one that I'll be thinking about for months to come. ...more

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Jan 18, 2015 Angie H rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, favorites, goodreads-first-reads

It is hard to say I "enjoyed" this book as it was pretty frightening and depressing to read about, but I definitely thought it was a fantastic and engaging read.
Why the 5 star " it was amazing" rating? Well first of all this book is well researched, easy to read and follow what is going on even with the scientific/medical terminology. The characters are great and the story and progression of the disease is well developed. Second this is the first time I've ever read a book taken from the point ...more

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Apr 08, 2010 Rachel N. rated it really liked it

The story of Alice Howland who at age fifty is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers disease. Alice is a professor at Harvard in linguistics when she recieves the news. It was interesting reading a book written solely from the point of view of someone with Alzheimers. I think Lisa Genova does a good job of letting the reader experience Alice's confusion from the disease. The only problem I have with the book is that it made me really depressed. Alzheimers is such a horrible disease and I hope so ...more

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Dec 22, 2011 Kayla rated it liked it

Shelves: x-2013

Wow! This book was a little hard for me to get into but at the same time Wow! I didn't cry until the very end where Alice had lost most of her memory. It breaks my heart thinking that so many people live day to day with out knowing what their past was filled of. I can't imagine not knowing when I met my husband, got married, and had children. I pray for all who are affected by this horrible disease. ...more

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