Rating: 
Summary: UGH
Review: Am I the only person who found this young woman to be exceptionally hateful? Selfish, self-obsessed, and shrill! I had a hard time caring about her at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Saves Lives
Review: This book is written in a way where even if you don't have an eating disorder, you could question. Meaning, it is written in a way where anyone can understand the torment that this woman went through and helps those that do not suffer understand why and how it can happen to anyone.It's truth and uncensored memories haunt you while you read, and this haunting can save people's lives that do suffer from anorexia and/or bulimia. It is written beautifully with words that flow through your mind with curiousity and sadness. I recommend it to anyone who has ever known someone with an eating disorder, suffers themselves, or just revels in fearless people who reveal their lives through literature in hopes to de-glamorize this concept of being thin.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful words on a powerful subject.
Review: The story of a young girl obsessed with her weight. Psychiatrists label it "anorexia nervosa", but what it really is is an endless cycle of eating, starving, binging, purging, until death. The book explores the results this bizarre behavior has on this one girl, and how it destroys what could have been a beautiful life. A horrible disease wastes this girl until nothing is left but a bone. I would have liked to have seen Marya Hornbacher go into the psychology and background of her illness more, and this lack of input causes the book to be a tad incomplete. Still, it is moving and powerful, one girl's account of a horrible illness plaguing the world today. You will not be sorry you read it.
Rating:
Summary: A Long, Hard Journey...
Review: I sat in silence for quite awhile upon finishing 'Wasted' and I'm still unable to find my voice. Marya Hornbacher's tortuous journey through bulemia and anorexia is a long, harrowing trip; for the reader, yes, but most importantly, for her. How she ever dredged up her past to find the strength to write this memoir is admirable, almost frightening, and incredibly intense. Do not start this book unless you are ready to take a long, hard, close look at a young woman struggling with an eating disorder. Things do not start out pretty, and they get no better from there. Marya starts her tale from the beginning, as a child who suddenly finds herself compelled to throw up her afternoon snack one day. After the first time, she can't seem to stop doing it. She is only nine. We read on as she goes through an early puberty, speeding up an intense hatred of her growing body, throwing up everything she eats, throwing up lunch in the elementary school bathrooms. We read on about her parents, their relationship with each other and with her; her growing preoccupation with food, with sex, with drugs. She wants to escape her life from her parents and does so with boarding school, where she has even more time to spend with bulimia, and then anorexia. She's hospitalized many times, sees many doctors, therapists, but can never seem to return to normal eating habits. As the years pass, she gets sicker, thinner, angrier, and upon moving to Washington D.C., she stops eating almost altogether. When she finally gets to a hospital she weighs 52 pounds and is given a week to live. Somehow, she makes it. She's alive today. In her memoir, Marya goes into brutal detail of every binge, of every bite she does not take. This book is a difficult read, a journey into a life that seems unimaginable. There are no easy answers here, and Marya does not put the blame on anyone but herself. She writes after one hopitalization, "Did my family set it off again? Did my father's neediness and my fear of it spark relapse? My mother's distance? An article I read? A woman I saw? Not likely. What probably happened is that, faced with a number of things in my life that I didn't like, I turned to my eating disorder because I had never, ever figured out how to deal." She was twenty-three when she wrote this, but says she feels much older. After all she'd been through, it's no wonder. This was probably an incredibly hard story to sit down and put to paper, but she found the strength to do so. Hopefully, someone may find help in this memoir if they need it. To the casual reader, the story will affect even the hardest heart.
Rating:
Summary: Read this more than once.
Review: Read this book if your life has ever been touched by an ED, regardless of who had it. Talk with others who have also read the book over a few months time, then reread it. Its quite different the second time for most people... While this book was written as a warning, to many caught in a downward spiral, it was instead a siren song. I offer the following insight: read Marilyn Mansons biography "the long hard road out of hell". Compare it with Marya's book, and notice that despite her warning, the two tend to share some of the same characteristics of self-promotion... I suspect this is true with most authors, music writers, and such. Its a survival skill in their field... were Marya to dwell on the boring aspects of her ED, one might simply put the book down... so she doesnt.
Rating:
Summary: I can relate...
Review: This book was one of the best I have read, and I have read plenty. Not only am I completely relateable to what she went through it made me relize that people can get over...it isnt completely impossible. It is a great book and I recommend it to people who live with this issue each day of their lives or someone who doenst even know what it is. It is the best book and helps you learn many perspectives of what is really going on.
Rating:
Summary: You're Not Alone
Review: I've been a bulimic for almost eight years, and all I can say is that this book defined every tear, bite, binge, lie, scream, confusion, anger, compulsion, weight, pound, and trip to the doctor that I've had. People say that there's a bible for every thing that defines them. For baseball players it may be a book on Joe DiMaggio. For me, its this book. Marya reaches out to the reader in vivid words and imagery that made me shut the book over and over again to cry...she was like me. I've been on and off meds for about six years and in and out of groups. everytime I have a relapse I read this book to know that I am nt alone, to motivate me to stand up, dust myself off, and know that its okay to love myself for who I am. People shouldn't say that they wish they're different, or what they wish they could change about themselves. Marya proves that the way people say things, the exact use of their words, hold inner meanings. Instead, 'I want to imrove myself', 'I want to grow from this' promote more positive goals. Marya taught me that. This book is wonderful for those who have little or vague knowledge about what and eating disorder really is, and its an absolute MUST for those who have , have had, or know someone who's had experience with an eating disorder.
Rating:
Summary: Only the Best
Review: This was the best book I have ever read in my whole entire life. For anyone who has ever suffered from an eating disorder, or for anyone who just wants to be better informed as to the vicious nature and social implications of the disease, this book is for you. Wasted is written in an eloquent and straight-foward manner. Marya Hornbacher adresses every sensitive issue imaginable, and avoids sterrotypes and medical jargon. I would recommend Wasted to anyone, regardless of their personal experience with eating disorders. The book is truly a gem, if you do not buy it TODAY, you will regret it for the rest of your life.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Book
Review: This book is absolutely amazing. Being a teenager myself when I read it, I was looking for answers. I think every female teenager goes through her same thought process at one point or another, and she really helped me get my act together. Whether it is yourself, a loved one, a friend, it doesn't matter, this is a great book to read to understand what their thinking is, and where they are coming from. I wasn't even sure what I was thinking when I was going through this, but I knew I needed help, and this gave me the strength to help myself.
Rating:
Summary: Trigger indeed
Review: I have to agree with some of the other posters--while excellent, this is definitely a triggering book. Please be careful when you read this--depending on where you are emotionally, it could very easily trigger anorexic or bulimic behaviours and emotions.
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