This novels follows a woman after she is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers disease. It's really well written, and told from Alice's perspective, whilst also showing the impact on those around her. As you would expect, there is no happy ending.

And off it goes to Lamilla as part of the wishlist tag game. Happy reading!

Arrived today. Looking forward to reading it!

wishlist tag for Paulanni

You've found a travelling book. Hurray!
The book's journey continues by its finder's cooperation and creativity. By making a journal entry on this book, you can add to the book's story as it travels from reader to reader around the world.
Enjoy your reading!

Привет!
Спасибо, что нашли время зайти на сайт и сделать запись в журнале! Напишите, когда и где вы нашли книгу.
Перед тем, как попасть к Вам, она побывала в других уголках света. История ее путешествий записана на сайте, и теперь к ней добавился еще один пункт. Я очень рада, что она нашла нового читателя в Вашем лице.

The book has arrived. Thank you, Lamilla!

This is a book I have wanted to read for a long time, and it didn't disappoint me. The author being a neuroscientist, she knows what she is writing about, and she does it well. She is insightful in describing what Alice is going through and makes the reader feel that they are seeing and hearing Alice as she experiences things. A touching book.

Country challenge (Finnish forum): Alice looks at their photos, and one of them was taken when she was on a holiday on Grand Cayman Island with her husband.

Congrats to the winner of the Book & bookmark sweepstakes! Hope you enjoy the book!

Thank you very much Paulanni for this interesting book, card, cool magnetic bookmark and book labels/stickers! I keep seen this title/author around but I didn't happen to read it up to now. Here comes the chance, it seems interesting!

Thank you bookfrogster and Lamilla too for sharing this book.
BookCrossers are generous people!

I think this book gets very positive feedback because it deals with a moving theme and one that most people can connect with one way or another.

Lisa Genova achieved to depict quite accurately the course one Alzheimer Disease's sufferer would have to follow, from the time the first symptoms get noticed till the latter stages of the disease.

The main focus here is Alice, the Alzheimer's patient, but the author tries to describe the reactions of the other people around her, from the awkwardness and petty of her colleagues to the refusal of accepting the situation from her family till their acceptance and disagreements on what is the appropriate path to take. The author tries to add some positive tones on her narration, but as bookfrogster mentioned, this is a story without a happy end... This is a book that one can read in one go if they have the time, it's interesting, informative and often heartbreaking.

But there are some flaws too. Sometimes it gets too poignant and the voice of the author seems to be stronger than the voice of the characters. The way examinations, tests, options for medicine, the biology behing the disease etc are mentioned is too clinical (pun intented). Most characters are quite one dimentional actually, one daughter is simply a mother, the other one simply an actress, the son is a future doctor and there isn't much depth on the conversations among them and Alice. Her husband feels somehow better sketched, but not that much. Alice her self sometimes appears too composed and self-aware on stages of the disease where she seems to be far gone too. Of course Alzheimer's is not a straight line, there are up and downs, each person is different, there are moments of epiphanies and twists and turns... But I'm not very convienced that a woman who appears to be very disoriented, forgets basic things about herself and her family and who is who, forgets words and their context, gets wrong the spatial proportions of her surroundings, have difficulties to phrase her thoughts etc, might be able to deliver a speach in front of an audience without a glitch, even if she just reads it from a paper It's hard to believe that they would often leave Alice alone when her abilities have deteriorate fast already. I also felt that among this tragic situation Lisa Genova "protected" her characters from even worse situations and issues that are saddly not rare in the real world. Alice never has a really bad accident till the end of the book, Alzheimer's Disease its self and luck saves her from suicide, we don't get so much of aggressive behavior or anger that many patients experience at some stages of the disease...

Furthermore, maybe poignantly so, the author chose to make Alice a Harvard professor, an educated and relatively well-off woman, with her health insurance and access to good doctors and a supportive system, a stable environment, many options and alternatives on the help she might have, even if not everything is perfect. There are even experimental medication programs under research of the best universities and medicinal schools where Alice have the choice to enroll, there is DNA analysis and of course the author points to the ethical dilemmas and questions surrounding those... Of course Genova makes it somehow easy here too, one of Alice's children have the genetic mutations that might lead to Alzheimer's latter in her life, but she'll have her own kids with IVF so she might control and chose the embryos that don't have the wrong genes...

How would an equivalent book be, featuring an Alzheimer's sufferer who had serious financial and family problems, a lesser education, living in a country where there isn't much specialisation or information on the disease, no special treatments and not many options or choices to make? I believe this would be a very different book...

All that said, as I mentioned earlier, Still Alice is a very good book. Not flawless, but very interesting, informative, heart breaking. It definately worths to be read. Thank you very much for sharing everyone!

The book got itchy feet again and will now travel further through the First Sentences VBB- Round 21!

Good Luck little book and Don't forget to write your news from time to time!

First Sentence:
Alice sat at her desk in their bedroom distracted by the sounds of John racing through each of the rooms on the first floor.

Wow, I'm so surprised that this was a book I picked by its first line, because I saw and loved the movie! It was powerfully moving and I don't think I would have chosen to revisit it by reading the book, but it looks like the universe had other plans, lol. Looking forward to it.
Also, sorry it took so long for me to journal, it arrived while I was off on a 6 week bike trip across the prairies.

I put off reading this book, having seen the heart-breaking movie. I'm glad I finally gave it a chance. It's very well-written and, like most books, conveys so much more than the movie. Most books on Alzheimers are written from the point of view of the caretakers. This one is in Alice's own voice. It felt very accurate to me in its depiction, from earliest days to far along, detailing the downward spiral month by month for two years. I think this is the only fiction book on the subject to have been endorsed by the U.S. Alzheimer's Association.