Appetites: Why Women Want

Appetites: Why Women Want
by Caroline Knapp

Appetites: Why Women Want
List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $6.62
You Save: $8.33 (56%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.70 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Compare Prices for Appetites: Why Women Want

(Click here)
Buy this book at online book store in your country
Canada | UK | Germany | France

Book Summary Information

Author: Caroline Knapp
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-03-24
ISBN: 1582432260
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Counterpoint

Book Reviews of Appetites: Why Women Want

Book Review: One More in the Name of Love
Summary: 5 Stars

Alice Walker once wrote, "Art unfailingly reflects its creator's heart. Art . . . comes from a heart open to all the possible paths there might be to a healthier tomorrow." Caroline Knapp's artistry was in writing and publishing her internal dialogues. This book appears to reveal her heart, a heart that was open to considering new and different possible paths to a healthier tomorrow. She may not have had all the solutions to the issues she raised in her excellent book, but I admire her tremendous courage to express her frustrations clearly and to think aloud to try and understand the motivations and causes for her behaviors. She expressed her best estimates of how she might improve her circumstances. This book is an excellent look at one [...] woman's cognitive thought processes about why she thought she was the way she was, and how she thought she might overcome her perceived problems. Whether you agree with her or not as to the causes of her issues and their possible solutions, if you read this book, you will learn something very valuable about the strong, and sometimes controlling, reasoning processes that likely flow through many women.

Throughout this book (and her books 'Pack of Two' and 'The Merry Recluse') she discusses her difficulties with communicating with her mother, her father, her significant others, professors and people in general. She discusses how she did not believe that her parents communicated well with each other in key areas. She watched her mother silently accept roles that she was not certain her mother should accept. She saw her mother accept treatment from her father that she thought her mother should have responded to differently.

When a woman chooses to attach her soul to another person's soul, and also agrees to "be silent to" or condone parts of the other person's philosophies or actions she believes to be in error - that prolonged, and potentially neverending, acquiescence can negatively effect her psyche. That degree of unceasing internal mental contradiction in major areas may manifest itself in either serious mental dysfunctions or physical ailments.

It is more healthy for a woman to express her objections, even if those objections are not addressed and remain outstanding, than to be silent. Women must overcome any discouragement they receive from their family, friends, and significant others, discouraging them from expressing the ideas they think may lead to possible solutions. They should not always defer to the people closest to them because women often have the best access to the most accurate information about themselves. And even when their suggested solutions may not be better than the current course, when they raise their objections, it gives their community notice of issues that likely deserve alternate responses and further reconsideration.

Thank you Ms. Knapp, not because you had all the right answers, but because you set a great example of a woman fighting resiliently to help herself and others, even when that self-examination was revealing and sometimes humbling. Even when she could not find sufficient motivations for herself, she worked toward and wanted other women to pursue their fulfilments and desires, and to become satiated. She wanted to stop the cycle of mothers unknowingly passing on negative patterns to their daughters. Caroline's voice was heard and I will always remember it.
Write your own review
More Appetites: Why Women Want reviews:
1

Summary of Appetites: Why Women Want

"The smartest anorexia memoir ever written and a fascinating journey along the torturous pathways of female desire."-Salon. With a new discussion guideWhat do women want? Did Freud have any idea how difficult that question would become for women to answer? In Appetites, Caroline Knapp confronts that question and boldly reframes it, asking, instead: How does a woman know, and then honor, what it is she wants in a culture bent on shaping, defining, and controlling women and their desires?Knapp, best-selling author of Drinking: A Love Story and Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs, has turned her brilliant eye towards how a woman's appetite-for food, for love, for work, and for pleasure-is shaped and constrained by culture. She uses her early battle with anorexia as a powerful exploration of what can happen when we are divorced from our most basic hungers-and offers her own success as testament to the joy of saying "I want. "Provocative, important, and deeply familiar, Appetites beautifully-and urgently-challenges all women to learn what it is to feed both the body and the soul.
The final and remarkable book of best-selling author Caroline Knapp underlines her gift of leveraging her life experiences into provocative lessons. On the surface, Appetites may appear to be about eating?-complete with Knapp's unflinching account of her anorexia. In fact, Knapp is writing about how every woman can decipher her hunger and loneliness by connecting with her desire to experience pleasure. She illuminates the ways in which cultural taboos about women who desire create vulnerability to disorders of appetite including food and alcohol addictions, compulsive shopping and promiscuous sex. In this expansive view, "one woman?s tub of cottage cheese is another woman?s maxed-out Master Card." Readers will nod in recognition as the author seamlessly weaves autobiography and anthropology, describing her family of origin, profiling women of appetite and countering what she calls "the culture of No!" that curbs and disguises women's desires. Knapp gets to yes by urging readers to ask: "What gives me delight and fully engages me?" Knowing that 42-year-old Knapp died of lung cancer makes this question all the more poignant. Such questions suggest Knapp?s brave and generous legacy. --Barbara Mackoff

Eating Disorders Books
Book Subjects
Most talked about in Eating Disorders Books
Eating Behaviour ImageEating Behaviour
by Terry Dovey
Open University Press; Published: 2010-09-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $92.54
Price in other shops: $127.00
Craving Earth: Understanding Pica--the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk ImageCraving Earth: Understanding Pica--the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk
by Sera Young
Columbia University Press; Published: 2011-02-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $14.65
Price in other shops: $29.50
Art Therapy and Eating Disorders ImageArt Therapy and Eating Disorders
by Mury Rabin
Columbia University Press; Published: 2003-04-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $31.80
Price in other shops: $39.00
Eating Disorders: Assessment and Treatment ImageEating Disorders: Assessment and Treatment
by David G. Schlundt, William G. Johnson
Allyn & Bacon; Published: 1990-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.95
Price in other shops: $58.95
Electronic Processes in Non-Crystalline Materials (Monographs on Physics) ImageElectronic Processes in Non-Crystalline Materials (Monographs on Physics)
by N.F. Mott, Edward Arthur Davis
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1979-08-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $225.00
The Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770-1796 ImageThe Chouans: The Social Origins of Popular Counter-Revolution in Upper Brittany, 1770-1796
by Donald Sutherland
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1982-10-28; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops: $59.00
Your Gut Feelings: A Complete Guide to Living Better with Intestinal Problems ImageYour Gut Feelings: A Complete Guide to Living Better with Intestinal Problems
by Henry D. Janowitz
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1994-09-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $6.99
Price in other shops: $45.00
Cystic Fibrosis: The Facts (Oxford medical publications) ImageCystic Fibrosis: The Facts (Oxford medical publications)
by Ann Harris, Maurice Super
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1987-09-03; Hardcover; Book
Price in other shops: $16.95
Thin ImageThin
by Grace Bowman
Penguin Global; Published: 2008-09-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.07
Price in other shops: $15.00
Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too ImageLife Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too
by Jenni Schaefer, Thom Rutledge
McGraw-Hill; Published: 2003-12-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.71
Price in other shops: $16.95
Health and Personal Care | Beauty | Digital Cameras and Photo | Kitchen and Housewares | Tools and Hardware
Copyright © 2003-2007 bookhills.com
Google
 
Web bookhills.com
Book store. Illustrated catalog of books on different categories