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How long does it take to read Wasted?

A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Marya Hornbacher

Wasted by Marya Hornbacher takes about 5 hours 34 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 5 hours 34 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1998. 304 pages, about 83,600 words.

12 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 9 hours 17 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 34 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 29 minutes

The page count is the median across 19 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Why would a talented young girl go through the looking glass and step into a netherworld where up is down and food is greed, where death is honor and flesh is weak? Why enter into a love affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Marya Hornbacher sustains both anorexia and bulimia through five lengthy hospitalizations, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and ultimately, any sense of what it means to be "normal." By the time she is in college, Hornbacher is in the grip of a bout with anorexia so horrifying that it will forever put to rest the romance of wasting away. In this vivid, emotionally wrenching memoir, she re-created the experience and illuminated that tangle of personal, family, and cultural causes underlying eating disorders. Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to the darker side of reality, and her decision to find her way back--on her own terms.

Subjects: Biography, Patients, Health, Bulimia, Anorexia nervosa, Eating disorders

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