Rating: 
Summary: Gripping and honest memoir
Review: I admire this author's willingness to bare her truths, no matter how stark, and her unflinching honesty. I found myself nodding in agreement at our society's obsession with weight and it is easy to see how so many young girls buy into the idea that weight is everything. As a former victim of Anorexia, I was able to relate to Marya's struggle with the potentially fatal eating disorder. I read it in two sittings and was duly impressed. Great memoir...
Rating:
Summary: Harrowing, worthwhile tale
Review: Hornbacher's vivid descriptions provide the reader a coherence and complete view into the world of eating disorders. She chooses her words carefully to describe and construct her world. A journalist, Hornbacher uses her research skills to explain some of an eating disorder's causes. We feel when she is hurting. We pray that she will get well, as we turn page after page long after bedtime. At times, the book is incredibly insightful, while at others it seems to skip around -- a mirror of her manic life. My only reservation with this book is its abrupt ending. Hornbacher cut off the tale just at its climax. Hornbacher raises many questions that only society can later answer. This highly-recommended book explores the disordered thinking behind eating disorders and the pain it causes for the patient as well as loved ones. People with eating disorders will want to read it to help them understand themselves. Those who love eating-disordered patients will want to read it to understand and answer that eternal question: "why?"
Rating: 
Summary: wonderful book, very informative
Review: I first read this book when I was 15, right after it came out. I was a girl struggling with anorexia, bulimia as well as severe depression and an anxiety disorder. Wasted was straight to the point and never hid anything. Although this book was not a cure-all for my problems, I did start to recognize a lot of things and it forced me to see that I could one day be the 50-some pound furry being that she had been. Mayra has a beautiful style of writing that draws you in and makes you re-live every painful moment with her, instead of being a boring summary of a person with an eating disorder. You feel like you at the toilet, the cupboard, the refridgerator and the hospital with her, feeling everything. Even if you don't have an ed, this book will open you eyes to the life of someone struggling with one, and it will make you realize that we're not all vain beings just trying to be thin. Although I will have to agree that some points in this book may trigger a relapse, going down the grocery aisle or viewing a Cosmo can do the same thing. This book has many more valuable lessons than possible negative effects and should not only be read by every woman. However, there is a lot of things that go into graphic detail, and there is a lot of strong language and religious mockery, so I would suggest this book for someone old and mature enough not only to handle the subject matter (ed) but that doesn't get easily offended. This book has been on my nightstand for years and will continue to be. Thank you, Mayra.
Rating: 
Summary: Polar Book by a Bipolar Person
Review: This is one of those books that is extremely polar: you either positively love it and agree with Marya Hornbacher all the way, or you really don't like it at all. I am going to try and avoid this stereotype and list the things I did and did not enjoy about this book. The plot is fairly straightforward, Marya Hornbacher, the author, chronicles her battle with both bulimia (beginning at age 9) and anorexia (age 15), until she finally is given just a week to live at the shockingly low 52 pounds on her then, five-foot frame. She gives insight into the causes of eating disorders: familial, societal, and within one's self, as well as describing life with the disorders, and the horrifying after-effects and health ramifications of them. What I liked about this book was that Marya was so honest. She was willing to disclose embarrassing details about herself (notably her description of early-onset puberty and her sexual promiscuity) so explicitly as to either repel one from eating disorders, or give one a genuine idea of what they are like. Many people who have eating disorders, after reading this book, find themselves thinking, "You mean other anorexics/bulimics think this way, too?" I also appreciated her clearly copious research on the subject of eating disorders. She really was determined to get some insight and not just really on personal experiences which may or may not be representative of the whole eating disordered population. I like her refusal to give this story a happy ending, though it is unsettling. She lets us know that the damage has been done and she will probably die young. I liked her writing style and the way that the book was written like a novel. The reading is very fast-paced and you don't get bored by this book easily. What I didn't like about this book was how raw and abrasive Marya Hornbacher could sometimes be. Yes, she has lived through a lot at age 23, but other people have lived through a great deal as well. Yes, she has been disappointed by her treatment by some therapists and theorists and parents and teachers, etc., but others have tried to help her and she manipulated them. I also didn't like how she used the term "we" to describe people with eating disorders, as though having one is like being a member of some sort of club. While Marya claims to want to break down the homogeneity in eating disorders' stories, her lumping all of them together into the "we" pronoun, completely undercuts this. I also feel that Marya dealt too much with what it meant to be sick, and not enough with trying to recover. She gives us a full-serving of dramatic self-destructiveness, but doesn't balance it off with an equally full account of her attempts at moving past the eating disorder. What's it like to feel disgustingly fat all the time? How did she meet her husband? What are her typical therapy sessions like? She glosses over these aspects with more melodramatic tales of her current relapse and health problems. I also feel that Marya was belligerent towards professionals. They call her depressed, she says she is manic. They call her immature, she says she is too mature. They call her father distant, her mother histrionic. She calls her father needy and depressed, her mother unemotional and cold. If Marya was in fact bipolar, I would have liked to have seen how she felt that impacted her eating disorder. The self-destructive "tips" on how to stay anorexic or bulimic, I shall not comment on as I do agree with Marya's belief that most eating disordered people would stumble upon them anyway, anywhere. Overall, this was a roller-coaster ride of a book. Parts of the writing were impressive, part were not. Parts seemed like an ode to masochism and madness, being offset by mockeries of disordered behavior, other parts did not. Quite frankly, I would like to see this author write some fiction as she says she intends to do. I think the energy of this book, if focused on something a tad less close to home for Hornbacher, could actually be a masterpiece of a novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Wasted: My Time
Review: I don't know what it is exactly about this book that I didn't like but I thought it was awful. When I read the reviews and page excerpts I thought I would like it. I was wrong. I just got the feeling that Marya is the snobby, pretentious type and I couldn't get past that. I know what it's like to have an ED. Her writing style is terrible. I don't recommend this one to anyone who wants to read about eating disorders.
Rating:
Summary: This is the best book on the subject
Review: I've had an ed for nearly half my life, and I've read almost every memoir and fictional account of eating disorders, as well as a great deal of the professional literature. Everything pales in comparison to "Wasted". If you are really interested in finding out what is going on in the minds of ed sufferers, this is the book you should be reading. It is gritty, brutal, honest, and definitely triggering to people WHO ALREADY HAVE eating disorders. [**I disagree with the reviewers who say that this book is a how-to manual on eating disorders. You do not get an ed by reading a book-- there are many complex factors involved. If you are inspired to starve or puke after reading this book, it is because of pre-existing psychological problems, not because Marya Hornbacher gave you a disease!] If you think ed sufferers are just a bunch of vain, spoiled young women, I still recommend you read this book. Even if it does not open your mind on the subject of eds, it is worth reading just for Marya's beautiful prose.
Rating:
Summary: thank god, she can actually WRITE!
Review: i am a 31-year-old woman currently working on a memoir of life with bipolar disorder. during the six months i've been working on this manuscript, i've read at least a dozen memoirs with similar subject matter, and i'm pretty sure i've read every book ever published about bipolar disorder. so many of these books are "dumbed down" to the point where they become insulting to the reader. i read elizabeth wurtzel's "prozac nation" and lori gottlieb's "stick figure" before finding "wasted," and i was about to give up hope that i'd ever find a memoir that didn't strike me as either a) fluff or b) another treatise by a whiny, self-indulgent, privileged white girl. hornbacher changed that, pretty much singlehandedly. "wasted" stands in a class by itself. hornbacher's prose is beautiful, intelligent, insightful, and, at times, very funny. i've read it over and over, dissecting it, making notes. the pages of my second copy (i gave the first one to a friend) are smudged with my fingerprints, pencil scratches, coffee stains, and, yes, cookie crumbs. (i think there's actually a chocolate smear beside one of my favorite passages. hey, you gotta fuel those late-night writing frenzies.) i understand how this book could be triggering for sufferers of eating disorders, but in no way do i consider it "pornographic." i understand how it could be seen as a how-to manual. i think, however, that in some ways this is a testament to the power of hornbacher's style. she draws you into her world immediately and refuses to let you go, which is what a good writer should do. i've read books about eating disorders which contain just as much "technical information" but failed to pull me in the way this one did. it is a book that will be harmful for some and helpful for others. the friend to whom i gave my first copy, a woman who suffered from bulimia throughout her adolescent and college years, agreed that it probably would have been harmful to her at one time, but she was grateful to read it now because it reminded her how terrible those years had been, and it was an antidote for her whenever she was tempted to go back. parents whose young daughters want to read "wasted" would probably do well to read it first and to discuss the material with their kids afterwards. beyond those words of warning, however, i think that most who read this book will be gratified by the author's eloquence, and the intelligent voice she brings to the genre of the "memoir by troubled young woman." thanks, marya.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Insight into Eating Disorders
Review: I think the comment that spoke to me the best after reading this book, and then reading the reviews on Amazon, was that it is a book about a woman drowning. This book does not have any easy answers. No real answers at all, that I could find. What it does is show the reader how complex an issue eating disorders are, and how difficult to overcome. The most difficult thing about this book was learning that the author is still not healthy, indeed will probably never be healthy, due to the ravages she has forced upon her body. That she still suffers and has struggles was saddening. Her self hatred was heartbreaking. The best thing about this book, for me, was that it helped me to realize that my own body issues are not worth holding onto. I do not have an eating disorder, and I never have. I'm just a 'normal' American woman, with the 'normal' food/body issues that that implies. After reading this book, I am resolved to be more forgiving of myself, to accept my body, and to try to give my daughter a shield to fight the cultural issues that make us all so very hard on ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone who is close to a women should read this book
Review: Everyone needs to read this book. It brings up questions other wise left empty and unasked only leading to more lost females in the Neatherworld. It is an insite into the female mind and the family pressures, social delemas, and cultural impact. It is a tail that does not claim to give answers or solve problems but shine a light on a subject eveyone should be more awair of. If you are thinking about this book stop thinking and buy it! It will change how you look at yourself in the mirror, how you look at other women, and how you look at eating disorders.
Rating:
Summary: great book
Review: sheer luck that i found this book, much less agreed to spend what little money i had on it, but definately worth it. i have recommended it to almost everyone i know.
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