Good Morning, Readers!  I am having such fun reading the paperback books I brought along to read and review while in California.  I hope you are enjoying the thoughts I have concerning them.  This week I read three of them, but will only review one or maybe two depending on the length of the rest of this part!  

How long has it been since you have been in Finley Library?  There are so many books to choose from there and so many different subjects covered.  Certain area are more profuse than others, but we all have different "likes" in our reading.  Those of us that volunteer there hope that you will  come in and check it out.  There is no cost involved (unless you lose the book) and we only bug you if you keep it over a month!  We try to do other things to help our patrons be able to find what they are looking for.  If the librarian there the day you are can't answer your question, they can call someone or leave a message for someone else that does know!  We are there to serve YOU, our "customers", so come in and check us out and a few books as well!

Here's a review:

Still Alice by Lisa Genova.  (PB)  (no series)  (2007)  Having no idea what this book would say on the subject of Alzheimer's, but being interested in the subject, I brought it along to read and am glad I did.  Many of us probably wonder if we are "getting senile" as we forget where we put things or cannot bring up a word we are looking to use in a sentence and this NOVEL did answer some of those questions I think.  However, this book is about "early onset" Alzheimer's, rather than that which comes on a person as they grow older.  It seems that the more we know about the disease the less scary it is although it is still very scary and probably more so to those in the caregiver position than to the one actually having the disease.  One thing I found that I did not know is that a person CAN have a blood test to check for certain genes that can tell them if they have or run the risk of having Alzheimer's.  So....

Alice is a fifty year old college professor at Harvard. She is out running one day and finds she does not know where she is or how to get home when she is only blocks from home.  That is not the beginning when she then thinks back over recent experiences; then she realizes that there have been other smaller things that could be seen as "markers" as well.  The story progresses through disbelief, resentment and sure knowledge by Alice, but the family's trip through the situation is a bit different.  Two of her three children decide to take the test for the disease and the third decides not to do so.  One child has the gene, but the other does not.  The way the husband and the children handle Alice and her disease is the most interesting aspect of the book to me.  The reader gets to follow along as Alice's situation worsens.  The attitude of Alice's husband is quite different than that of her children and I found that I had definite opinions about ALL their behaviors.  It is very interesting to be the "fly on the wall" and watch Alice, her family and her friends go through this most difficult disease.