book nook: still alice

still alice
lisa genova

until recently, i hadn't read any books other than the ones for school (which, for the record, just isn't the same) so i told myself, at the start of my placement, that things would change. i started rereading my harry potters (teehee, they still get me everytime), but i also wanted to read something i hadn't read before, so i read two other one as well. the first one was a teen fiction book i found on my shelf (my cousin gave me a few to read the last time she was in town) which was pretty terrible and didn't deserve a review, haha.

luckily the second one, this book, was so much better. it had been on my list of books to read for quite some time now, but i never got around to reading it before this week.

still alice is a fictional novel about a woman (alice howland), a linguistics professor and research scientist who is diagnosed with early-onset alzheimer's. the book basically takes you on alice's journey of living with dementia and her gradual cognitive decline. the story is told from her point of view, which i thought was a really interesting approach.

for a first novel genova did such a great job, but i guess that's what you get from someone who has Ph.D in neuroscience from harvard. :P this book was insightful, well-written, and full of so many moments that made my eyes water and tears pop out. (yah, it totally made me cry on more than one occasion.) i brought it to my placement to read over lunch and was really tempted to just close my office door and read it for the rest of the afternoon, but i didn't(although i kept thinking about it the rest of the day, haha). other than the heartwrenching moments that cropped up every now and then, i found it to be a pretty easy read and i finished it in about two days.

overall i thought still alice was fantastic - i totally recommend it! just remember to have a box of tissues handy, just in case. :)