Goodreads Book Review: Still Alice

Still Alice by Lisa Genova
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The subject matter of Still Alice hit a personal note for me: a family friend a couple years younger than my mother (so barely 60) has dementia. A few years ago she was bubbly and gregarious and would attend holiday dinners with her adopted son; today she lives in an assisted living facility with people two or three decades older than her. My "Aunt" J. is the first person close to me with dementia; before her I never knew firsthand the way Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia ravage a person's mind and spirit.

And so Still Alice was a powerful book for me, made even more so because it tells the story of a woman with early-onset Alzheimer's disease from her own perspective. When the novel begins, 50-year-old Alice is a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard with a husband and 3 grown children. She begins experience jarring lapses of memory like forgetting words, missing appointments and even a flight, and most disturbingly becoming lost 10 minutes from her home. While at first she chalks these changes up to menopause and/or stress, a doctor confirms that she is actually suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

As someone whose career and identity revolve around her intellect, Alice is especially devastated when the mind that long-defined her begins to disintegrate, but as she comes to terms with her illness she is able to realize that what makes her "her" is so much bigger than her mind.

The novel depicts the progression of Alice's disease over the course of two years; each chapter encompasses a month of her life. Thus, the reader witnesses the gradual breakdown of her mental facilities from minor memory lapses and occasions of disorientation to her inability to work, travel alone, or, often, to even recognize family members. The simplicity of the writing is a strength as the reader is able to grasp what it is like to be someone with diminishing memory and awareness. And while we witness Alice's fear and confusion, we also experience her courage and the love she still has for her family and her life. We see her re-evaluate, in a sense, what makes her life worth living.

It is obvious that Lisa Genova, who has written other fictional accounts of degenerative illnesses, has done sufficient research on Alzheimer's, but the book never comes across as clinical. It helps the reader understand what it is to live with dementia in the way that mere facts and statistics cannot.

Still Alice also conveys the conflicted emotions of Alice's husband and children as they learn of her diagnosis and then watch her illness progress. Initially, some of the characters come across as one-dimensional (especially Alice's two daughters), but as we see them cope with their mother's illness in realistic ways, they gain depth. And Alice's husband reacts in ways that are frustrating to witness but understandable and human (initially with denial, then making choices that seem to put his career ahead of his time with Alice).

It is an anguishing subject matter, but Still Alice manages to be, overall, a story of hope. It ends with one of its most moving scenes: Alice's actress daughter, Lydia, performs a skit for her. And while Alice is unable to understand the words of the script, Lydia's tone, facial expressions, and body language communicate emotion to her mother. That emotion?

Love.

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One of My Favorite Meals to Cook

I have to credit Elizabeth for this post as well.

Between watching The Food Network and Gordon Ramsey's shows and collecting recipes on Pinterest, I've kind of become a wannabe foodie. But while I enjoy experimenting with recipes, when it comes to cooking regular meals, I usually stick to a few basic, tried-and-true things. It just makes things easier and helps me not waste food. Overall, some of my favorite types of food are Italian and Mexican, so I cook a lot of pastas, quesadillas, etc.

One of my favorite things to cook is pasta with chicken and spinach in a tomato cream sauce. It's become a go-to-meal for me because it's so easy and adaptable, and it covers all the basic food groups.

The above is fettuccine with a Vodka sauce from a can. I find that fettuccine works best with this dish, but what's great about it is that you can use whatever pasta you want, make it whole-grain or gluten free, the list goes on.

I used a canned Vodka sauce that I had, but usually I just mix marinara and Alfredo sauces. Again, this is pretty customizable, and someone feeling really ambitious could make sauces from scratch.

Even the veggies and the protein are custumizable. This is my favorite combination, but I think that it could work equally well with shrimp in place of chicken.

So there you have it - what I cook for a quick, easy, cheap and versatile meal.

Survey/Interview...Haven't Done One of These in Quite Awhile

Since my Livejournal days, in fact when I used to take them a lot from Elizabeth, who tagged me to do this one! Memories.

I started filling this out a few days ago but never got around to completing it until now...


Four names that people call me:

1. Emily
2. Em
3. Emmy Sue (nickname a coworker gave me; although no my middle name is not Sue)
4. Pinky (high school nickname)

Four jobs I have had:

1. sales associate/cashier
2. editor
3. admin. assistant
4. pet sitter

Four movies I have seen more than once:

1. Finding Nemo 
2. Titanic
3. Moulin Rouge
4. Forrest Gump

Four books I’d recommend:
     1. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

     2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
     3. Carry on Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton
     4. Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott 


 Four places I’ve lived:

1. Lanham, MD
2. surburban Baltimore, MD
3. Ellicott City, MD
4. N/A

Four places I have been:

1. Bermuda
2. the Bahamas
3. Montreal, Canada
4. France (Provence and Paris)

Four places I would rather be right now:
This question is hard because I'd rather be anywhere warm right now...but most of my family and friends are in places that are not so warm, and I don't know where specifically I'd really want to be. So...warm or near loved ones? Hmmm....

1. family friend's outside of Orlando
2. friends in Denver
3. but a nice tropical island would be nice
4. or on a cruise ship in warm waters (Hawaii??)

Four things I don’t eat:

1. raw fish
2. sardines
3. liver
4. cottage cheese

Four of my favorite foods:

1. Ice cream or frozen yogurt of any kind
2. avocados/guacamole
3. Coconut
4. chocolate

Four things I’m looking forward to this year:

1. a couple of hopeful trips (possibly Florida and Vegas)
2. meeting a friend's newborn baby, and seeing the newborns of several acquaintances on facebook after they are born
3. winter being over with...
4. and the start of spring

Four things I say:
This is a hard one..."say" in what context? "Say" or "write"? Clearly my overthinking is not helping me here. Many of the things that I do say make me sound like a teenager; I have way to many "like's" and "ummms" in my speech along with things like "awesome" when I can't think of anything else to say. Buuuut....

1. "But yeah.../so yeah..." It's not so much that I say this one, but that I write it. All the time. But yeah...
2. "I know, right."
3. "tuckus" My favorite non-curse word for the rear end. 
4. One day at a time. 

Four people I’m tagging:   Naaah, not tagging, but anyone who feels like it should fill this out; I miss the fun diversion that is these survey/quiz/interview things. :)

Let's Talk the Interesting Part of the Super Bowl...

That is, the ads. :P. 

Yeah, what was up with some of those ads??

The somber tone was not what I was expecting for a football game. First there was the much-talked about Nationwide Dead Kid Ad. I get what they claim to have been going for here (a "conversation" about household safety hazards) but the execution was majorly lacking, and viewers didn't so much see a public child safety message as a manipulative grasp for profit through dead children. 

With all the talk of the Nationwide ad, I feel like few people noticed the domestic violence PSA. This definitely threw me for a loop for a second (a woman calls the police and asks for a pizza), but unlike the Nationwide...thing, it was clearly a public service announcement rather than a commerical-with-a-message. And it's certainly a message the NFL needs to address. But, yeah, not the usual tone for a football game...

And somewhere in there there was a Scientology ad. 

Even the car commercials dealt with more serious themes (fatherhood, the wisdom of the elderly) than your typical car/truck/SUV ad. Among those, the standout was Dodge's "Wisdom." 

 "Keep your eyes open and sometimes your mouth shut."

Always (the Maxi-pad company) didn't quite reach the heights of girl power that Goldie Box did last year, but they tried.

"[Running like a girl] means you run as fast as you can."

Turbo Tax's spot seemed fitting for a Super Bowl played (and won) by the New England Patriots, and surprisingly for a commercial for tax prep services, it wasn't boring!

But the major OMG Squeee Awww 111!!!111 moment of the night was of course brought to us by Budweiser. I  mean, these commercials just get better and better each year.

So yeah, it was a really strange year for Super Bowl ads, but at least there were Clydesdales and puppies!

Goodreads Book Review: And the Mountains Echoed

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I loved Khaled Hossieni's debut novel, The Kite Runner. I liked his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, even better, earning it a place on my list of favorite books. So I was a little disappointed with his third novel, And The Mountains Echoed.. Don't get me wrong, Hosseini is still an outstanding writer, with emotional resonance, memorable and relatable characters, and a strong sense of place. However, with this third book, he simply tries to do too much, bogging down the story with too many characters, uneven pacing, and too many shifts in time, place, and narration.

At it's basis, And the Mountains Echoed is the story of a love between siblings that withstands trails of time and separation, and as such, it is a moving story. It opens in 1952, when the siblings in question, Abdullah and Pari, are ten and three respectively, living in an impoverished Afghan village.

But from there, Hosseini expands the story by telling it from the perspectives of other characters in other times and places. These range from a relative of Abdullah and Pari's who lives for decades in Kabul to seemingly unconnected characters in present-day Greece and northern California. The reader does come to realize that these characters and their lives are in fact connected, but the shifting in time and place just add confusion. Yes, the characters are compelling, but as soon as I would become fully immersed in one story, Hosseini shifted to another. And the pacing was uneven, with certain events in characters' lives given too much time and others breezed over.

There are things in And The Mountains Echoed that Hosseini still does very well. All his settings come to life, not just his native Afghanistan but Greece, California, and Europe as well. And he is sensitive to the various social and political climates in which his story is set. It is when his characters straddle multiple worlds - as with characters who have immigrated from Afghanistan to Paris and California - that he is at his most compelling.

Finally, the love and loyalty Hosseini's characters have for each other here, and the moral complexity of their decisions, is moving. At its basis, And The Mountains Echoed is a heartwarming story. But it would have been even more moving if it had been simpler and sweeter.


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"According to Autcorrect, Happy Milk Day!"*

*The title of this post is attributed to my friend Amelia's facebook status.

On a more serious note, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I wanted to muse a little bit on both his legacy and one of my favorite quotes of his:

"We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope."

Of course MLK was a prolific speaker, and their are so many quotes from his speeches, writings, and elsewhere that have been inspirational.

The above has always stood out to me, however, in it's applications. I can extend it to my personal life, although of course Dr. King was speaking in the larger and admitedly more significant context of the Civil Rights struggle.

 But yes, I myself struggle sometimes dealing with the sometimes larger, sometimes petty disappointments of my own life. So to juxtapose that against the "bigger picture" (infinity!) reminds me to maintain perspective.

As a nation it is sometimes easy to lose hope as well. Especially when recent events like the Ferguson protests remind us that we have so far to go when it comes to full civil rights and racial equality. But when looking at the bigger picture, we have come along was from Selma.

Martin Luther King, Jr. lost his life in pursuit of his dream, but he never lost "infinite hope." And even with all of the finite disappointments we face, both as a society and as individuals, MLK's dream and his infinite hope live on.

Law and Order and Williams Syndrome

I  somewhat recently became addicted to Law and Order (especially but not limited to SVU), but I am still catching up on never-seen re-runs. So I was exited to see the description of the 2007  Law and Order: SVU episode "Savant," in which a girl with Willams Syndrome is the only witness to her mother's beating. My cousin has Williams Syndrome, so I was curious to see how accurately the not-so-common disorder was represented and hoping that it wouldn't be overly sensationalized, as Law and Order is wont to do sometimes.

As expected, the episode was a pretty good mix of the reality-based and the sensationalized. Key to the plot is the witness (Katie Nicholson) identifying the assailant via voice thanks to her perfect pitch. This is an exaggeration, but people with Williams Syndrome tend to have musical gifts coexisting with mental retardation. In fact, my cousin attended a school, Berkshire Music Academy,  uniquely designed for students with Williams Sydrome.

Also spot-on was Katie's extremely social and friendly nature; while in some ways people with Williams Syndrome have trouble with the nuances of appropriate social behavior, they are usually extremely empathetic and able to read people's emotions. A scene in the first five minutes of the episode, where Katie attempts to give Detective Stabler a hug because he "seems upset," made me chuckle and think of my cousin.

Other details in the episode make it clear the the writers did their homework on Williams Syndrome: Katie has heart problems; she tells the detective that some people think she is an elf (because of their unique facial features, people with Williams Syndrome are often described as elf-like).

There were some awkward moments in the episode, like when Katie mimics an orgasm when recollecting to the court an encounter she overheard between her mother and her mother's lover. And  because I felt extremely protective of Katie, I wish the detectives and later the judge had been more patient and understanding of her Williams-typical behaviors like over-affection. But this is probably accurate to the way a lot of people react to the disorder. Overall, it was a positive and not altogether unrealistic portrayal, and I'm grateful for this type of media attention being given to this rare disorder. Hopefully more people who don't have someone in their life with Williams Syndrome know at least a little about it thanks to Law and Order.