The Hungry Heart (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 2)

Hungry Heart

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Jean Jennifer Weiner is a fun writer and to read about her life is just as entertaining as her writing. She is honest and forthright about how her …more Jennifer Weiner is a fun writer and to read about her life is just as entertaining as her writing. She is honest and forthright about how her struggles and that makes you love her all the more. I have always enjoyed her novels but now that I feel I know her more personally, I'll like her writing even more. I recommend this peek into her world. You won't be sorry. See 2 questions about Hungry Heart….

Lists with This Book. Aug 06, Adi rated it it was amazing. Jennifer Weiner is the only novelist I follow on Twitter. Out of the many hundreds of books I've loved, very few authors have given me the sense of familiarity she did with "Good In Bed", which tempted me to pull back the curtain and risk revealing her to be someone I couldn't stand. After a few years of tweets, I'm delighted to discover I like her even more, so I was thrilled to hear on Twitter, obv! But the parts that meant most to me were the segments where I felt as if JW had passed me a note reading "me too" with a gentle squeeze of the shoulder.

I teared up reading about her traumatic birth, and as I recounted parts to my husband I found myself breaking down into sobs at the rawness I still feel about my own. I read with absolute understanding her devastation at breaking up with someone she knew wasn't right for her, and recognized the feeling of being so desperate for love in a world that tells you you're unlovable that you will cling to a broken relationship.

I nodded along at the anger evident in her nasty moniker for the ex's new love, and saw my own regrettable cruelty mirrored in her words. Of course, as the saying goes, "Your fave is problematic!

But all in all, her flaws are evidence of her humanity, and it's her humanity, her imperfection, that makes me like her to begin with, and makes this memoir so welcome. Dec 12, Diane rated it liked it Shelves: This is a fun collection of essays from author Jennifer Weiner. She talks about her awkward childhood, her strained relationship with her father, her quirky mother, her struggles with weight and overeating, how she got her start in journalism and later, how she started writing novels.

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There's also an interesting essay on the experience of getting one of her books made into a movie "In Her Shoes" which featured Cameron Diaz and Shirley MacLaine , but my favorite pieces discussed her run-ins with This is a fun collection of essays from author Jennifer Weiner. There's also an interesting essay on the experience of getting one of her books made into a movie "In Her Shoes" which featured Cameron Diaz and Shirley MacLaine , but my favorite pieces discussed her run-ins with sexism in the publishing industry, and specifically, her Twitter-spat involving novelist Jonathan Franzen.

What I knew of her was tied to news articles I had seen about the Franzen fracas and her complaints about how women's fiction is both promoted and reviewed in the media. I still love one of the quotes that came out of the fracas several years ago, which is to paraphrase that when women write novels about family, it's considered chick lit, but when men write novels about family, they're really writing about AMERICA. To sum up, I enjoyed this collection of essays, which had both serious and silly pieces.

I could have skipped the one rehashing Weiner's love affair with the "Bachelor" TV shows, but I thought the pieces about her family and her weight issues were strong. I think fans of Weiner's novels will like this book. Favorite Quotes "I'm not a great writer.

But maybe I'm a really good storyteller. I care about language and structure and pace, but I care about plot and characters more. I know I'm not the kind of writer who wins prizes and a place on the ninth-grade summer reading list, the kind of writer who gets called 'great' But 'great writer' was never my ambition, and I suspect was never within the realm of possibility. I believe that, through education and inclination, through temperament and history, all authors grow up to be a particular kind of writer, to tell a specific type of story. We could no more change the kind of work we do — the voice in which we write, the characters that call to us — than we could our own blood type.

Nor does it mean that the women who read them deserve to be ignored or erased. Women's stories matter, the stories we write, the stories we read They tell us who we are, they give us places to explore our problems, to try on identities and imagine happy endings. They entertain us, they divert us, they comfort us when we're lonely or alone. And women matter, too. View all 4 comments. Aug 02, lisa rated it it was ok Shelves: I hadn't realized how prolific Jennifer Weiner has become over the last fifteen years. To me she's always been, "That author who wrote two books I really, really liked, and a bunch that I didn't care too much about, so I stopped reading her stuff, but I feel pretty confident recommending her books to certain readers.

She also I hadn't realized how prolific Jennifer Weiner has become over the last fifteen years. She also has put out a new collection of. I can't quite call this book a memoir, or an autobiography, since it's pretty unfocused. Weiner jumps back and forth in time within each chapter or essay, I suppose but the way the chapters are laid are fairly linear to her life.

She puts her family history and childhood memories in the first part of the book, followed by her high school experiences, and her college years, etc. However, she seems to jog back a couple of times to talk about her feelings and opinions on some bigger issues happening in greater society, making this a hybrid of Laurie Notaro's humorous essays on life, and Tina Fey's quasi-memoir Bossypants. If you liked Bossypants, or The Potty Mouth at the Table you will probably like this book, even though it feels much more self-absorbed than either of those books.

I got an ARC of this book earlier this month from a giveaway listed by the publisher on Shelf Awareness. Since I liked Jennifer Weiner's books once upon a time, and since In Her Shoes is one of my favorite film adaptations of a book, I was excited to get back into Weiner's world. And while the overall feeling of the book went up and down for me, by the end I knew I didn't much like this book, and unless you are a diehard fan of Jennifer Weiner, you will probably not like this book either. Much of the book is a loud shriek of constant complaint. I feel bad saying that, especially since there were times when Weiner's complaints were legitimate, and when they were, the writing was spectacular.

Her feelings of devastation and anger about her complicated relationship with her deadbeat father brought tears to my eyes, and her frustration with herself as a new mother was also well done. She makes great points about the hypocritical sexism of male book reviewers, and about society's view of larger women. However, she conveniently glides over some of the arguments people could give her against these very points, namely that instead of making any decent attempt at losing her baby weight she goes right for gastric bypass surgery.

Or that most romance books are so badly written that there is no way a paper would waste space on reviewing them. You can't compare an anonymous writer of Harlequin drivel to Stephen King, who is a very good writer, despite sticking to mostly horror stories. She also spends a good portion of the book whining about how she didn't fit in at Princeton because she wasn't a slim, pretty girl. Somewhere in the midst of this self-pity she makes an off-hand, snarky comment about how one of her roommates decided to make friends with the people she meets at her seminar for students of color, instead of her white suitemates.

Is there no part of Jennifer Weiner that understands this? Should we all shed tears for her because she's too smart to belong, or should we feel sympathetic to her roommate who had to deal with Weiner's neediness, and sarcasm? Toward the end of the book, Weiner includes a chapter on the tweets she's sent out to the world. At first I thought she was talking about tweets that made a difference in some way, like her tweets that cost misogynist columnist Andrew Goldman his job, but it turns out she was talking about completely random tweets that she seemed to think were oh-so-clever including way too many about The Bachelor.

The nastiest of these collection of tweets was, "If I'm Joan Didion's dog, I'm not liking my chances. I would expect that argument from anyone except a writer. How else would a writer process the pain and horror of such losses? How would Jennifer Weiner expect to process such a terrible thing should she have to live through it? Can she not use her famous imagination to begin to comprehend what Joan Didion must have gone through following such sadness? Also, Didion was a well known, well respected writer long before A Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights came out, meaning she is not defined by these books except, I guess, in Weiner's mind.

I wonder if anyone has pointed out to Princeton graduate Jennifer Weiner that her former professor, Joyce Carol Oates, wrote a similar memoir about the pain of losing her husband called A Widow's Story: Again, how else do writer's process such a terrible, and unfair thing? To be honest, my anger over that tasteless tweet knocked a star off this review for me, and made me pretty sure that I won't be following Weiner on Twitter anytime soon. I can see this being a popular book, and it wasn't the worst thing I've read this year, but it did remind me of why I got tired of reading Weiner's novels.

View all 8 comments. Sep 28, Joy rated it it was amazing Shelves: I've read a lot of Jennifer Weiners novels and loved them all. This is the first non fiction book of hers that I've read and I loved it! It's wonderful, honest and candid.

Jennifer is very open about her life. Learn to accept compliments with grace, not self-deprecation. Putting off joy until you're the right size could mean you'll I've read a lot of Jennifer Weiners novels and loved them all. Putting off joy until you're the right size could mean you'll never experience it at all. Keep your chin up and your shoulders back, as if you are the ruler of all you survey. Carry yourself with confidence and that's what the world will see. I highly recommend it!

View all 7 comments. So this was a very weird book to read.

Hungry Hearts

I liked it, didn't love it, and don't really see myself re-reading this for years to come like I will other memoirs written by Roxanne Gay, Jenny Lawson and Mindy Kaling. I think for me, this book jumped around way too much to get a good handle on things. Plus, Weiner mixed mediums in here. We get part memoir and then she throws in a short story I think that she wrote about her sister and her when they went to visit their grandmother, then it's part commenta So this was a very weird book to read. We get part memoir and then she throws in a short story I think that she wrote about her sister and her when they went to visit their grandmother, then it's part commentary to us the reader, her daughters, and then memoir format again.

The initial part of the book starts off in a linear timeline and then that gets shot all to hell in a bit and jumps back and forth until the very end. I have been reading Jennifer Weiner's books for a very long time. My first exposure to her was "Good in Bed" and I absolutely loved that.

I couldn't really relate to "Little Earthquakes" but still enjoyed that book as well. I even liked her foray into short story horror fiction with stories like "Recalculating" and then a couple of her books didn't gel with me and I just pretty much took her from my auto-buy category to well see if you like the sample category. The last two books I read of hers I have really enjoyed though, so will think about putting her books back in the auto-buy category.

I do think that though parts of this book were painfully honest, I didn't get a very good sense of Weiner's family outside of her sister, mother, and grandmother. Her brothers are ghost-like referred to but rarely appear. We know that her father left her family and that caused a hole that her mother tried to fill. And due to her father not meeting his obligations, the family sounded like they definitely struggled. And reading between the lines and reading what is actually written it sounds like the man had serious mental health issues. I felt for her while reading anything to deal with that.

When a parent is gone you can't fix what happened before. So even when there's a slight feeling of relief, you still feel sorrow over that. I think that if Weiner had stuck with just her life and how that shaped her to be a writer it would have worked better for me. When she goes off and focuses on other things that I thought were interesting, but ultimately didn't fit the book a male reviewer bashes her and others online via Twitter and there's a huge fallout with that is when my interest started to wane.

It's not that it means she wasn't making a good point. I just didn't get why it was even included. Other things at times seem to not really be provided enough development for me to get a sense of things.

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For example, Weiner is a divorced mother of two girls and in a committed relationship with an old boyfriend. She used parts of her life to write "Who Do You Love". But the man in the book is brought up sparingly in the book, and it just felt like he along with all of the men in her memoir don't feel developed. I know that they are all real people, but I don't get a sense of them at all. And the way we readers are introduced to him was weird too. We read about them together first, then work backwards to she met him again, and then someone justifies ending her marriage.

I don't know, the whole thing felt uncomfortable. It reminded me of a time I was at a bar waiting on a friend reading a book of course! I tried to exit out of that conversation for 20 freaking minutes. I was giving the bartender for the love of all that is holy glances who purposely stayed the heck away from us. So I just had a sense of this is very weird while reading the book and deciding to back away from even trying to explore what point she was trying to get across there. The writing was at times I felt open. The flow wasn't that great for reasons I said above. The ending to her daughters I thought was great, but it didn't end as solidly as I think it could have.

Hang on, this was good. I'll deal with the chick lit aspect farther down. Weiner writes about growing up overweight and socially rejected, or feeling that way, with parents who have some issues for reasons that maybe or maybe don't become clear. She grew up Jewish in Connecticut, but far from her extended family in Detroit and her family was pretty well off until her father cut out and ran and went bankrupt. But she had a plan, become a journalist, maybe like Nora Ephron, write a novel by age 30, Hang on, this was good.

But she had a plan, become a journalist, maybe like Nora Ephron, write a novel by age 30, have it made into a movie. She would go to Princeton and study under J. At some point midway through the book Weiner is a best selling chick lit author who has a book being made into a movie and complains about a talk she did with Kurt Vonnegut, a hero to her like a lot of us and how he trashed her work.

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It's not all bad. Anyway, I figured the interesting part of the book was done. The book switches gears to a series of set pieces, personal essays about this or that, including her mother, her weight, discovering too much about her father postmortem, having a movie based on her book made, and, my favorite, comparing pets and boyfriends. These essays are terrific. They're smart, entertaining, funny, insightful and a perfect treat for anyone who makes it this far into her book.

So, a moment on the chick lit. We all have our own perspectives, but too me this genre casts an evil pall over literature - crap filling up the best seller lists. But, of course, I haven't read it. But, then what is it? I skimmed samples of Weiner's books and found the opening first person narratives painfully self-indulgent, then I found one I liked that opened 3rd person - it was a young adult novel.

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But, there is a personal problem, my own biases doing - what - I don't know. I liked how Weiner talked about her books, their autobiographic basis and how she made a thing of making her heroines overweight and having issues with it, like she has had herself. It's, in her own summary versions, of certain value.

I don't know where I stand on all this, other than to see some shades of gray ha! I can't say she pried open my mind, but she had me thinking. The whole first half of this book I was sweating whether I should be wasting my time listening to an author of chick lit, and yet it was good and the book got better and all that concern was unfounded.

It just is what it is I guess. Anyway, this was rewarding to me and terrifically read by Weiner herself. Overdrive digital audio, July 24 - Aug 8 rating: Aug 25, Melissa rated it it was amazing. View all 3 comments. Oct 12, Kaethe rated it it was amazing Shelves: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writin - Jennifer Weiner I've enjoyed a couple of Weiner's books, but more than her storytelling, I really admire her activism.

I lost patience with people ragging on women's writing and writing for women a couple of decades ago. And don't get me started on genre snobbery.

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And so does every highbrow apologist, because the only writings that have survived from previous centuries, let alone millennia, were POPULAR. And it is my beli Hungry Heart: And it is my belief that writers who worked for pay on deadline, with quick turnaround, are the best. So I remember many of Weiner's efforts to speak out against the quiet, systemic sexism that denigrates what women do as somehow less valuable than men's. Women young through old are responsible for most of the books read and sold in the U. No, they don't even get half. VIDA's got the numbers and they're appalling, as is the fact that the worst offenders do not even have to apologize, because who cares?

And the most prestige, the most coverage, the most work continues to go to het white men that no one enjoys reading. Anyway, Weiner is funiest when writing of the worst times of her life. Her family is screwed up in mostly charming ways. She is always clear that writing is a job, and for anyone interested in following her advice, she presents a refreshingly clear-eyed training plan. So that's all great. But I love the bits when she is actively fighting for justice: I hope she's proud of that work.

I hope her daughters are, too. Jul 09, Jennifer rated it did not like it. An uneven memoir that chronicles the author's life as a writer, a wife and mother, and mostly a lonely fat girl, a topic that comes up repeatedly. At times her wit comes off callous, like the teenaged mean girls who never let her sit at their table. Her weight is focused on more than the relationship with her father, both of which scarred her and shaped her entire life.

But her empathy for other afflictions, noticeably the complete dismissal of a peer's confessed trauma of teenaged acne, is frus An uneven memoir that chronicles the author's life as a writer, a wife and mother, and mostly a lonely fat girl, a topic that comes up repeatedly. But her empathy for other afflictions, noticeably the complete dismissal of a peer's confessed trauma of teenaged acne, is frustrating. Also confusing was the first half of the book focusing on her loneliness, only to reveal towards the end that while she may have struggled to connect with peers and make friends, she was in serious relationships for most of her adult life, undermining the credence of her extreme loneliness and belief that nobody would love her or value her because of her size.

Finally, the miscarriage chapter was not only harrowing, but way too detailed for the unprepared. Her graphic depiction will stay in my mind after the rest of the book fades. Nov 03, Donna rated it it was ok Shelves: I don't now why I picked this book up. I usually like autobiographies. I've read one of her fiction books and I didn't like that one either. I didn't feel there was any purpose to this I didn't feel like this was a person I needed to know about. I know that sounds mean. I just broke one of my own rules regarding autobiography reviews.

It was just hard to relate to this woman. Oct 27, Sally Ember rated it it was ok Shelves: I have read many of Weiner's novels, so I thought I'd enjoy her essays and personal memoir-type chapters. At first, I did. Too much about the same topics: Not only did Weiner decide to have a dangerous surgical intervention bariatric surgery that helped her get and may or may I have read many of Weiner's novels, so I thought I'd enjoy her essays and personal memoir-type chapters.

Not only did Weiner decide to have a dangerous surgical intervention bariatric surgery that helped her get and may or may not help her stay smaller but still "overweight" by current cultural standards , she continued to obsess over the same things, anyway. I don't want to hear it nearly as much as they want to share about it.

She did change it up, writing about parenting, relationships, motherhood, her childhood, her college years, her siblings and adult family members. But, the best essays IMHO were about her professional life: While I can appreciate the courage and commitment it took for her to publish and republish the more revealing and personal essays, I simply do not care about her personal life and didn't want to read so much about it. A more complete review is available on my blog: Lancaster is funny, relate-able and endlessly entertaining.

Reviews described Weiner's memoir as funny and compared her work to that of Tina Fey's of which I did find funny. I did not see that as the case with this memoir. It i A more complete review is available on my blog: It is entertaining and, at times, funny.

She spent most of that time complaining and whining. I would probably be a fan of Weiner's novels, as she describes them in Hungry Heart. I probably will read Good in Bed and Little Earthquakes at some point, despite never having read anything by Jennifer Weiner before. Her memoir, however, did not sit well with me. I had to push myself to finish it through all the kvetching, moaning and then the hypocrisy. When I read a memoir, I don't need to believe the same things as the writer or agree with what they do. I don't even need to understand why they believe what they believe or do what they do but I do need an honesty and consistency that I did not find in this memoir.

For this reason, I have to give it two out of five stars and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone that I know, especially not a girl or young woman who I wanted to feel better about her body.

Feeding the Hungry Heart | Geneen Roth

Sep 27, Judy Collins rated it really liked it Shelves: We all fell in love with Jennifer Weiner's fictional stories; from her very first book to the present. Her signature wit and honesty once again gives readers an inside look at the talented author the woman behind the words and her incredible journey. Where no subject is off-limits in her essay collection: You will find yourself drawn to different parts which are relatable.

You get up again. A women matters, too. From her childhood dream of becoming a published author, she has taken stands, and taken the heat, and has changed the world. However, when she returns home and puts the baby to sleep, an unseen person enters the apartment. Mina sits up in bed and watches the person enter the bedroom. The screen then cuts to black as a gunshot rings out. Jude is next seen running into the police station, frantically asking where his son is. The baby is unharmed, but Jude breaks down in tears. It turns out that Jude's mother shot and killed Mina because she recognized that Mina was a danger to her grandson, and that Mina would have eventually starved the baby if she lived.

In her prison cell, she expresses regret for her actions, but does not regret protecting her grandson and saving him from his mother. The film ends with Jude and his school-aged son playing on the beach. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Hungry Hearts Italian film poster. Archived from the original on 6 October Retrieved 24 July Retrieved 7 September Retrieved 22 July Retrieved 7 June Retrieved 4 January Retrieved 11 May Retrieved from " https: Use dmy dates from September Interlanguage link template link number.

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