Confessions of a Book-A-Holic

I’m about halfway through “Still Alice” and I must say it has already been a fantastic read. I’ll give you a brief synopsis of the story without giving it away (because I hate when people do that). Alice is a distinguished professor at Harvard University along with her husband John. She is the mother of three children who are all in their adult years. Two have gone to college graduated and become successful individuals to their mother’s standards but her youngest,Lydia, is failing to meet her expectations.

It is after a trip visiting Lydia that Alice begins to notice some changes in her memory (i.e. forgetting where her phone charger is, date,etc.) Naturally paranoid that she’s getting older and entering in her final phase of womanhood, menopause, Alice googles her symptoms and concludes that menopause is the obvious answer to her recent forgetfulness. It is not until she can’t find her way home from Harvard yard, a place she and her husband fell and love and are more than familiar with that Alice seeks medical attention.Many tests later she is presented with the news that she has early onset Alzheimers.

My Thoughts
This book is of particular interest to me because I aspire to be a professor at a major university in the same area as Alice (Linguistics/Language). I love to read, as you well know, and to read about a character with such great knowledge, who has worked so hard for her position and her education be struck with an untreatable condition that slowly eats at her memory and mind is absolutely striking. It hits me harder than a ton of bricks to think about working your whole life and learning all these things only for it to be ripped from you mind. To have your most precious moments of births,loves, relationships,family erased is unimaginable.

I have never experienced or interacted with anyone with Alzheimers, nor do I have any family friends with this disease, but one thing that Lisa Genova does well is that she acquaints you with the main character and her family so well that when Alice finds out about her condition and then shares it with her husband and then her kids, the reader can feel the weight of their grief.

I’m very interested to see how Genova will finish the story as it takes place in the early 2000s and therefore no cure for the disease has been found. Most stories end happily and I just don’t see that happening here.

I started out the kid who had trouble reading. Yep, hooked on phonics definitely worked for me. Years later I’m reading books like it’s going out of style (Actually it might be…I’m currently thinking of purchasing an electronic reader). I finish a book, close it, and stack my books one on top of the other on shelves in my closet leaving me little closet space and a mind filled with thoughts.

I didn’t know I was a bookaholic until last year (2008) when a nearby borders announced it was closing it doors (I feel myself tearing up just thinking about it). The last week of the store’s opening I stayed in the store for hours picking up AND purchasing anything that sounded remotely interested. A couple hundred dollars later and my friends are looking at me like “Angela, what the heck?” I didn’t mind that I couldn’t buy lunch for a few weeks ’cause the books were all I wanted.

And so, instead of making me join “obsessed borders’ shoppers anonymous”, my good friends gifted me a book journal to keep track of the books I read and would recommend to others. This blog is a collection of those entries as well as current reviews of the books I’m reading at present.

So I’m here to say, “hello. My name is Angela and I’m a book-a-holic.” I don’t plan on recovering or fighting this addiction. I do plan on encouraging others to be just as obsessed as me. And I’m always planning a trip to borders. See you here or see you there.

Angela