Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time by Valerie Bertinelli Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.99 You Save: $22.01 (85%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $1.47 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time
Book Review: How can you not love Valerie?
Summary: 5 Stars
I have always been a fan of Valerie's. ODAAT was on when i was about 3 but I always caught it in reruns. Marrying Eddie certainly put her into a bigger spotlight and I began to relate to her. She is very frank about her weight, her marriage and her family. I have never thought she is fat and I was bummed at how hard on herself she was. But she is clearly in a better place now and seems like a wonderful mother. I gave the book to my mom after I read it and she also enjoyed it very much. I recommended the book to all my friends, you will finish it in a day like i did!Book Review: Just what I expected, and easy to read
Summary: 4 Stars
I found Valerie's story to be refreshingly candid. As a long-time fan and someone who has also recently lost a significant amount of weight, I was very interested in her story. This is not a "how-to" weight loss book -- actually, she doesn't spend a lot of time on that issue. But it is an honest look back at her life and how she got to where she is now. Enjoyable read.Book Review: Semi interesting subject matter, but should have been ghost written - this woman is seriouslly idiotic
Summary: 2 Stars
I got this book for insight into what I thought was an interesting life. However, the book, which could have gone into depth about some really interesting times, only serves to show Ms. Bertinelli's lack of depth and intelligence. Yes, she comes off as sweet and well-meaning. But really, with all the problems going on in the world today, the biggest thing she has to say is commentary about her repeatedly gaining and losing 20 pounds? Seriously??
This woman's self-worth is measured by her weight, as she reminds us ad nauseum by relaying her current weight at every juncture in her life. She has no introspection about anything else in the world or her life. She treats Jenny Craig like the Messiah. (Wonder how Ms. B. will feel when her contract runs out and she gains all that weight back because obviously you can't sustain a healthy weight loss you achieved eating chemical cheese curls [Hello Exhibit A: Kirstie Alley]).
This could have been an interersting book, but instead comes of as a Jenny Craig commercial written by a nice, not very deep and not very intelligent woman who despite having lived some interesting times, lacks the intelligence and introspection to write about them in other than a superficial manner. The weight obsession is very immature, redudant and annoying (typical eating disordered behaviour, but not too interesting for the reader).
Check it out of the library if you are interested. Not worth the cover price. Not that much info on her marriage other than Eddie drank a lot and did a lot of coke, they both cheated, they didn't have sex very much, Eddie had good taste in gifts and they love their kid who now plays bass in van halen. Oh, and Val likes David Lee Roth now. There I saved you $25.
Oh, and what is up with the HORRIBLE inside picture quality. How could any publisher let that go to press??
Book Review: Empty Calories
Summary: 1 Stars
Lite on insight, long on product plugs, this vapid autobiography appears to have been ghostwritten by Jenny Craig's publishing division.
Once an appealing young television personality, Bertinelli now seems content to have re-invented herself as a self-absorbed diet shill who spends as much time here dithering over her yoyo-ing waistline as she does her near-non-existent acting career and failed marriage to a drug happy rock star. Then one day she discovered Jenny Craig. . . and the rest reads like the world's longest People magazine profile. (Title of book doesn't even make sense--except as some kind of backward homage to Jenny Craig: Sounds as if Bertinelli were suffering from eating disorder and trying to GAIN weight.)
Look elsewhere for anything remotely resembling a shocking revelation--Bertinelli foolishly revealed all the juicy parts (and there weren't that many to begin with) on TV during a pre-publication media publicity blitz.
So what we're left with here is a book-length paid ad for Jenny Craig--only readers are the ones footing the bill. The corporate brown-nosing ranges from Bertinelli's alleged admiration for Kirstie Alley's "success" on Craig's diet program (Huh??? Has she looked at a tabloid lately?) to the inclusion of an unflattering, out-of-focus shot of Jenny herself, accompanied by the ridiculous caption "Isn't she beautiful?" (No, at least not here.) And--did she mention?--Valerie really does love Jenny's cuisine!
Yet despite her self-avowed new-found grasp of responsible eating, Bertinelli is apparently so busy admiring her svelte self in a mirror that she has somehow failed to realize that her seriously overweight son Wolfie now looks like a teenage Jenny Craig spokesperson just waiting to happen. And, with Mom's connections, he just might be.
Will be interesting to see whether she maintains her weight loss once her Craig contract expires and the TV talk shows have moved on to weightier matters than the dial reading on her bathroom scale.
Book Review: Losing It....Lost it...
Summary: 3 Stars
IN my opinion Valerie could have been moe forthcoming with additional information in numerous places of this book. Although I enjoyed this book, it seems that everytime I was waiting for the big finish to a story or wanted more information, she would fail to follow up with details. Perhaps due to the fact that I am an investigator I get easily annoyed with half stories. Seems to me that if you are in half way then you either go all in or not in at all. You choose.