| Undiscovered | 
enlarge | Author: Debra Winger Publisher: Simon & Schuster Category: Book
List Price: $23.00 Buy New: $7.99 You Save: $15.01 (65%)
New (43) Used (26) Collectible (1) from $5.34
Avg. Customer Rating: 13 reviews Sales Rank: 104648
Media: Hardcover Edition: 1st Simon & Schuster Hardcover Ed Number Of Items: 1 Pages: 208 Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6 Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 1416572678 Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092 EAN: 9781416572671 ASIN: 1416572678
Publication Date: June 10, 2008 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Undiscovered August 11, 2008 0 out of 5 found this review helpful
I read this book in a matter of an hour...it was confusing and just awful. I do not recommend this book. I am glad I bought it on Amazon and did not pay the bookstore $23.00 price. I would have been even madder at that!
Alternately Revealing and Cryptic Look a Rule-Breaking Actress' Journey of Self-Discovery July 31, 2008 8 out of 9 found this review helpful
If you've ever seen Rosanna Arquette's self-indulgent, worshipful 2002 documentary, Searching for Debra Winger, you caught a glimpse of a well-regarded actress whose self-imposed and ultimately short-lived retirement inspired the film's eponymous title. In the film, Winger is trenchantly sardonic about the inherent sexism in Hollywood and proves to be a perceptive non-conformist unwilling to compromise for a youth-oriented industry she doesn't respect. Her new book reflects much of those same qualities, and true to her independent attitude, it is most definitely not a straightforward autobiography. Rather, it's a series of anecdotal essays and poems - sometimes meandering, sometimes emotionally incisive - primarily focused on the past dozen years of her life, a defining period in which she quit the A-List and elected to live her own life on a farm in the Catskills with her family. Winger supplements her personal accounts with drawings of various passageways not by her but by Philippe Petit, an aerialist most famous for walking a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Although she has not met Petit, it's clear she is making an analogy between his particular talent and the balancing act she has been managing between being an actress and a wife and mother.
Winger does share how she has since returned to acting on an occasional basis these days but more on her terms since she is obviously finding fulfillment elsewhere. Not that it's been a carefree pastoral existence in upstate New York since she had to take care for her dying mother. Winger's passion, so evident in her early 1980's roles like An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment, is still very much in evidence in this book as she continues her quest to live life to the fullest regardless of the circumstances. At the same time, she can be unnecessarily cryptic about her motivations and thoughts. It's obvious she is avoiding any hint of a "tell-all" with this book, but the drawback is that we never really get her perspective on her infamously tempestuous reputation in the film industry. Perhaps she has evolved enough from her past to not feel the need to readdress it, but I have to admit I frankly haven't and would have loved to hear her side of things. The actress admits that she would prefer working more these days, and so would we. In the meantime, as Winger puts it, she is "always searching for the next door, the next role, the next change". Perhaps she could include the next book, a more revealing autobiography.
A complete waste of time and money! July 26, 2008 3 out of 7 found this review helpful
I finally had to stop reading 3/4 of the way through this nonsense. I love autobiographies and biographies. I mistakenly thought this was the former. It is not. It is simply random thoughts, most of which are of no import. I cannot imagine anything in this book to be of interest to anyone other than Ms. Winger, herself. There is no continuity and Ms. Winger exposes absolutely nothing about herself - beyond proving that she has nothing interesting to say, that she has zero talent for writing and that she has carried her obvious obsession with self reflection to the point of the ridiculous.
just ok for me July 17, 2008 1 out of 5 found this review helpful
I bought this because Rosie loved it but I didn't. Debra tries to use grand english and strange sentences. She's from a different world than the one I live in.
Not a typical biography July 13, 2008 4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is not your usual type of biography / memoir. It is more her feelings with a few antecdotes dispersed within. Very introspective with poetry and prose thrown in. I liked it a lot as she reminded me of Hugh Prather. But then she never was a conventional actress either.
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