RAINY DAY EXCERPTS: “HUNGRY HEART”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, originally hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea and now hosted by I’d Rather Be at the Beach; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s release is a book I’ve had since 2016!  Hungry Heart:  Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing, by Jennifer Weiner:  Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay * Nominated for “Best Memoir & Autobiography” by Goodreads Choice Awards 2016 * Named a “Best Book of the Year” by New York Post

“You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll want to read it again.” —TheSkimm

 

 

 

Intro:  The other day, I was walking from the hair salon to pick up my eight-year-old after school.  It was a beautiful February afternoon, unseasonably sunny and springlike, with a sweet breeze rummaging in the tree branches that were just starting to bud.

Also, my hair looked spectacular.

I was feeling really good.  I’d put in a solid morning writing; then I’d done a spinning class, where, according to the computerized rankings that I obsessively checked, I hadn’t finished last.  I was wearing my favorite jeans, which are dark-rinsed, straight-legged, stretchy and forgiving, and the Eileen Fisher cashmere sweater that I’d snagged for 70 percent off at the cash-only sale.  With my UGG boots on my feet and my purse, with its furry purse-charm, slung over my shoulder, I strode confidently down Lombard Street, feeling like I was on top of things, like this was a day when I had it all figured out.

And then I fell.

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Teaser:  Hungry women are easy to lead and easy to fool and extremely easy to sell stuff to.  Diets are the tool of the patriarchy.  Also the devil.  And they don’t work. (61%).

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Synopsis:  Jennifer Weiner is many things: a bestselling author, a Twitter phenomenon, and an “unlikely feminist enforcer” (The New Yorker). She’s also a mom, a daughter, and a sister, a clumsy yogini, and a reality-TV devotee. In this “unflinching look at her own experiences” (Entertainment Weekly), Jennifer fashions tales of modern-day womanhood as uproariously funny and moving as the best of Nora Ephron and Tina Fey.

No subject is off-limits in these intimate and honest essays: sex, weight, envy, money, her mother’s coming out of the closet, her estranged father’s death. From lonely adolescence to hearing her six-year-old daughter say the F word—fat—for the first time, Jen dives into the heart of female experience, with the wit and candor that have endeared her to readers all over the world.

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What do you think?  Do the snippets grab you?  Would you keep reading?

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