Rating: 
Summary: she knows how we feel
Review: as someone who has suffered on and off from eating disorders for the last ten years, I can really relate to what Marya writes. She is also very adept at capturing emotions of anorectics, and letting people know that you can be at a normal weight, and yet still battling the demons in your head. a refreshingly honest book
Rating:
Summary: This book portrays what REALLY goes on in the mind...
Review: I was really captivated by this book. I, myself, am a writer who happens to have both anorexia and bulimia... and I could completely relate to Marya's words and most importantly, her thoughts. This book made me feel less alone, less crazy, and ultimately, UNDERSTOOD. I wish I could thank her personally for writing this book. I wish you all the best, Marya. You are a strong and compassionate person. Thanks for giving me the understanding that I needed at a crucial point in my life. Your words entered into my heart and my mind... and they stayed there... you make me want to really LET GO of this damn "disease."--Shannon, age 22
Rating:
Summary: TRUTH AND POWER
Review: It is more than a disease, a condition--it is a lifestyle. This permanent trap of self-destruction eludes nearly all those that try to help: boyfriends, doctors, families. We are attracted to and addicted to both the people who cause the behavior and the behavior itself. Where is the hope? Perhaps in understanding.
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Summary: Marya, please stay alive to write some more!
Review: As a compulsive overeater who used to envy people with real eating disorders (after all, they were thin), and now a recovering drug addict, I recognized a lot of my own sick thinking in Marya's incredibly articulate, powerful account of her battle with her disease. But the end of the book filled me with fear for her. Marya, YOU ARE NOT ALONE, and you're not unique (altho your writing ability is pretty darn outstanding). There are people recovering from the compulsion to self-destruct--whatever form it takes--all around you, who can help you find serenity. And we want you around to write more books! Your self-awareness, honesty, and intelligence are needed on the planet. Give voice to the next stage of your life....which I pray is a journey to a new and powerful selfhood!
Rating:
Summary: Finally an honest look at eating disorders!
Review: As a female who has struggled with eating disorders for the past 6 years, I have read nearly every "eating disorder" novel to date. While most are written by outsiders, those who do not live each day with the struggle, Wasted is written by a woman who has traveled through the realm of eating disorders. Wasted takes an honest look at the causes and the effects of anorexia and bulimia. It does not glamourize the outcome. It does not portray eating disorders as simple things that sufferers "choose" to begin and end. Marya's account is truthful. Her writing is haunting, at times she speaks as if she is outside of herself. The reader can see how complex eating disoders are, however, they can also see what eating disorders are: shallow, decietful, selfish, useless, and a waste. Perhaps the only complaint I have is that the ending was not optimistic. But that's eating disorders. As you travel through their maze, you begin to wonder what recovery is. Marya speaks for women like myself who are victimes of themselves. Thank god someone finally wrote an account of what eating disorders ARE and not what they are SUPPOSED TO BE according to our society. Thank you Marya.
Rating:
Summary: "WASTED"
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I have read several and this was by-far the most raw.I myself and suffering from Anorexia, and it really left me indiffernt. Many people say "it changed them" but if your at your wit's end it won't change you, rather give you somthing to relate too. I reccomend this book to anybody,maybe it would help somebody else more than I though.
Rating:
Summary: An intense "no holds barred" account of living with an ED
Review: I have read, I believe, every true memoir written by family members, doctors, and sufferers. Marya's book is the most disturbing and yet the most real. Her ability to verbalize her internal emotions and thought processes is unparralleled. As an avid book reader of all types, including psychology, I was strongly impacted by her writing. It appalled me in both it's truthfullness, straightforwardness, and her ability to not spare herself and society and supply a lot of reasons "why" she developed an eating disorder. Also, though terrifying, it is the first time I have read how the thinking of someone with an eating disorder can be unconscious and becomes forever more a part and parcel of the individual. Her goal of the book, to keep others from where whe went, is admirable and I hope anyone who thinks of eating disorders in a glamorized light will read this book and see them for what they really are - hell and slow suicide. Lost years and permanent damage. Marya's book is a combination of an extremely talented writer who confronts her problems unflinchingly. I cannot reccomend more heartily than I have and I hope everyone reads it critically and emotionally.
Rating: 
Summary: The Battle of a Young Girl
Review: Wasted is a true story that traces the thought process of a girl who has trouble with anorexia and bulimia. Marya, the main character, grows up as an only child. She develops odd eating habits from her parents that will haunt her for the rest of her life. At the age of nine, she has her first run in with bulimia. In high school, Marya is offered a scholarship to a writing institution where she believes she will become thin, smart, and a whole new person. When she gets there, her eating habits become out of control. She falls in and out of clinics and has a battle with life and death throughout the book.
This is not a book to read if a good solid plot is what you are looking for. If being put in the shoes of another is what you're into, this book is excellent. I wouldn't advise anyone who is of a young age to read Wasted because it is quite graphic but also I believe that it would discourage to anyone who is thinking about becoming an anorexic. As a whole, the book was interesting but it never pulled me in. It was more forcing myself to read it than never wanting to put it down. Wasted is written creatively by writing in more of a thought process then in a story line. It's just not my style. I like books with a solid plot and a good storyline and Wasted doesn't contain either.
Rating: 
Summary: Eating Disorders: True Insight
Review: Marya Hornbacher writes about her life's revolution around eating disorders in Wasted, a memoir of anorexia and bulimia. Throughout her life, Hornbacher faces family and health struggles as well as internal conflicts ranging from promiscuity to an addiction to crack cocaine. All of this influences her dependency on eating disorders.
At times, Wasted is comparable to a girl's diary, filled with pages of poetic ramblings. The book would draw restless page skimming (which would result in equal understanding) save for Hornbacher's talent for writing with intense verbs and perfectly constructed sing-song sentences; readers roll down each page with a strong sense of imagery.
Wasted is for anyone who has considered eating disorders as an option to relieve self-consciousness, or anyone interested in the psychological side of eating disorders. It's not for the light-hearted.
Rating: 
Summary: Unsatisfactory Conclusions
Review: I'm a boy who has suffered through years of an eating disorder myself. In reading this book, I did become entranced by the many facets of Marya's descriptive prose. In that, I did feel, as many others have written, that she encapsulated a great amount of what it feels like to live through this. The quality of her writing is truly great. However, she, unfortunately, did not stop there.
The nature and tone of her highly unsympathetic conclusions about people who engage in disordered eating dismayed me; claiming that they are basically 'lazy people who want to avoid their lives' is not only crude, it is offensive. Further, her exposition of a combination of popular social theory and an obfuscating psychological model were quite unconvincing. 'Mental illness' in all of it's forms is caused solely and completely by trauma, caused by varying forms of abuse, in early childhood. Social nor cultural values on the subject of aesthetics have the power to cause nor greatly influence the development of an eating disorder. Her 'triangle theory,' is also simply not a sufficient explanation for why she felt the need, from so young an age, to destroy herself.
Marya takes on the classic role of most autobiographies when she, ultimately, sides with her parents; she justifies her mother slapping her, and otherwise does not condemn them when they obviously wronged her. I was truly alarmed by the passage when she describes her 'fake accounts' of sexual abuse; and the fact that her parents didn't believe her at all in when she made these claims. It seemed to me that maybe she did originally tell the truth on that point, and then later cover it up, saying it was all a lie because her parents were so callous. If my suspicions are right, then this may be why she still suffers from 'symptoms,' in which case I hope one day she can explore that more fully with someone who will beleive her.
The quote included at the top of amazon's editorial review from the book is indeed perhaps the worst example possible. The author was already bullimic for several years in the narrative when that passage appeared; so was it really just a 'media influence' which caused her to start starving instead, or was this just another stop on the emotional journey of a damaged person? She did, after all, return to the bullimia at later points, so this can't really be taken as a satisfactory explanation, though I can see that it is a popular turn of phrase.
Part of the reason why my own eating is not currently disordered is that I gained the ability to be sympathetic to myself and sensitive to my own needs as well as others. Rightly condemning my own parents also helped with this greatly; because doing so allows me to fully take my own side as well as the side of every other abused child in the world. This book did not help me to reach that point at all. This book seems to point to confining people in hospitals and force-feeding them ice cream, all the while feeding them abusive 'tough-love' psychology, and engendering them towards cultural, as opposed to personal, explanations for why they are the way they are.
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