"This girl shivers and crawls under the covers with all her clothes on and falls into an overdue library book, a faerie story with rats and marrow and burning curses. The sentances build a fence around her, a Times Roman 10-point baracade, to keep the thorny voices in her head from getting too close."

Monday, January 17, 2011

nose in a book


i love lazy days.
lazy days mean nothing important to do other than lounge around in your owl pj's with a great cuppa tea and your nose in a book.
well.
that's what it means for me.
so i decided that today...i will share with you my favorite author.
her name is marya hornbacher and she is one hell of a woman.



she was just 22 when she wrote Wasted: A Memoir Of Anorexia and Bulimia.
that was the first book i had read of hers...as i was struggling with an eating disorder myself.
she has a wicked, dry sense of humor and when she writes, she writes truth that is so real it can sometimes be daunting to actually read.
her book however was a saving grace to me at the time and helped me (not completely of course, a book does NOT cure you of an eating disorder) to face some of my monsters residing under my cozy bed.

her second book was not a memoir but a novel, The Center Of Winter which follows the story of a family struggling to cope with the aftermath of a tragic death in the family.


her third book, which i just completed last week, is called Madness: A Bipolar Life. This was written after marya was diagnosed with the mental disease, bipolar. this book kind of reaches home for me as my grandmother was diagnosed with a type of bipolar when she was really young (though with medication and a healthy lifestyle, one can live fairly normally)

the reason i like marya is because she has been through a lot and she has a lot to say and share with other people who may not understand such things as eating disorders and mental illnesses. she writes with a fiery passion and she doesn't leave anything for the imagination. she is graphic, raw and totally fantastic. i challenge anybody who wants to gain knowledge on real life situations to read marya's books.
what marya has to say is serious but her books are far from boring, and at times even entertaining.
but be warned, as i said she is graphic when telling her stories.
there are swear words, sex scenes and the way she explains her illnesses are so real it's as if a movie is playing inside your head when you read it.

*footnote
"You wake up one morning and there it is, sitting in an old plaid bathrobe in your kitchen, unpleasant and unshaved. You look at it, heart sinking. Madness is a rotten guest."
-marya.

3 comments:

  1. I took Madness on appro from Exclusives, cause I remember you told me about her.
    And since I was also struggling with the good ol' bipolar - think it may be interesting :]
    <3 you!
    xxx

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  2. Zee! It's an amazing book.
    She is a wonderful writer.
    And i love you.
    x

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  3. Ooo, see, now I need to add her books to my "to read" list, because they sound so good.

    P.S., I'm following you! Just in Google Reader, because the Friend Connect won't let me sign in. But if it ever does someday, I'll make sure to update it. ;)

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