{"id":347,"date":"2010-01-09T02:25:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T02:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=347"},"modified":"2014-10-01T03:08:55","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T03:08:55","slug":"still-alice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=347","title":{"rendered":"Still Alice"},"content":{"rendered":"

My plans for the weekend involve a blanket and a book or two.<\/p>\n

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n

I’m a committed non-fiction reader; resistant, for whatever reason, to the suspension of reality necessary to enjoy most novels. Sure there’s the occasional story that grabs and holds me, but more often than not I leave them half-read and only half-enjoyed.<\/p>\n

Sometime before the holidays I read the debut novel by Lisa Genova which was recommended to me by the owner of a little bookstore I found here in town.<\/p>\n

(As a side note: How wonderful is it to have someone, anyone, employed in a bookstore actually be familiar enough with the inventory to be able to recommend something based on one’s favorite authors?<\/i>)<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

Still Alice<\/a> tells the story of a Harvard professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. A sad story, sure, but unique in that it’s told from Alice’s point of view and thereby offers insight into the painful descent into dementia.<\/p>\n

One of my most favorite parts of the novel occurs toward the end; Alice has been invited to deliver the keynote at a national conference for Alzheimer’s care professionals. She makes a plea to not be forgotten and written off or limited by her disease saying, “… My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I’ll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I’ll forget it some tomorrow doesn’t mean that I didn’t live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn’t mean that today didn’t matter.”<\/p>\n

A worthy credo for any of us, I think.<\/p>\n

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –<\/p>\n

So… any good books this weekend to stay warm with?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My plans for the weekend involve a blanket and a book or two. – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – I’m a committed non-fiction reader; resistant, for whatever reason, to the suspension of reality necessary to enjoy most novels. Sure there’s the occasional story that grabs and … Continue reading Still Alice<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}