New books #10-12: Reading Retreat

Evening all. I hope you all had a good bank holiday. With nothing planned for Sunday and Monday I went to my parents house and spent the entire time reading. For the most part I left my phone in their house and sat in their summer house and read! And it was great, no distractions just being in my own little world and reading.

I finished a couple more books in the weekend which I’ll mention in other blog posts. On Sunday I finished The Very Best of Frasier which was a book of 15 of the finest Frasier scripts. This was a really good book because a) I only got into the show in the final few episodes, and b) from a screen writing perspective it was like a lesson in how to write a great comedy.

After this book I then hit a classic, Animal Farm. I didn't realise how short it was, and to accompany the reading I listened to the Inception and Skyfall soundtracks, just to give it more drama. I can see why people regard it a classic, but it didn't do it for me. I am glad I read it though.

The final book I read was Still Alice, which is what the film of the same name was based on. It won Julianne Moore and Oscar, Bafta and any other acting award earlier this year. It’s about Alice, a 50 year old Harvard professor who has early onset Alzheimer’s disease. I chose to read this book because of my time working in a dementia unit in an old people’s home part time for 5 years. The book was a really good read. It was really interesting to see how the Alzheimer’s developed and more importantly how Alice’s family responded.

There were a couple of observations that rang true to my time working in a dementia unit. The first being how they had to keep the codes hidden to keep the unit locked. This happened with my work as residents would stand behind you while trying to leave and they would memorise them and try and escape. The other observation was how some residents wouldn't have any family or friends visit them and how residents were often forgotten. I wouldn't say this was the case with all the residents I saw, but a fair few of them had no visitors. It would be really interesting to see what the film is like and how Julianne Moore portrays somebody with Alzheimer’s.