Actor Valerie Bertinelli gives an affecting narration of her heartfelt memoir about love, family, grief, and food. In a warm, conversational tone, she urges listeners to be more intentional about finding joy in their lives. She is a delightful storyteller as she shares anecdotes about her television work, including her recent projects for The Food Network, as well as remembrances of cooking Italian recipes with her family and Indonesian dishes with her former mother-in-law. Best of all is her pride in her son, Wolfgang, and her affection for her late husband, musician Eddie Van Halen. The care this couple displayed for each other, even after their divorce, will inspire listeners to find the best in others. A rewarding listen. M.J. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today
Narrated by Valerie Bertinelli
Valerie BertinelliUnabridged — 6 hours, 47 minutes
Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today
Narrated by Valerie Bertinelli
Valerie BertinelliUnabridged — 6 hours, 47 minutes
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Overview
A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Beloved actress, Food Network personality, and New York Times bestselling author Valerie Bertinelli reflects on life at sixty and beyond.
Behind the curtain of her happy on-screen persona, Valerie Bertinelli's life has been no easy ride, especially when it comes to her own self-image and self-worth. She waged a war against herself for years, learning to equate her value to her appearance as a child star on One Day at a Time and punishing herself in order to fit into the unachievable Hollywood mold. She struggled to make her marriage to Eddie Van Halen - the true love of her life - work, despite all the rifts the rock-star lifestyle created between them. She then watched her son follow in his father's footsteps, right up onto the stage of Van Halen concerts, and begin his own music career. And like so many women, she cared for her parents as their health declined and saw the roles of parent and child reverse. Through mourning the loss of her parents, discovering more about her family's past, and realizing how short life really is when she and her son lost Eddie, Valerie finally said, “Enough already!” to a lifelong battle with the scale and found a new path forward to joy and connection. Despite hardships and the pressures of the media industry to be something she's not, Valerie is, at last, accepting herself: she knows who she is, has discovered her self-worth, and has learned how to prioritize her health and happiness over her weight. With an intimate look into her insecurities, heartbreaks, losses, triumphs, and revelations, Enough Already is the story of Valerie's sometimes humorous, sometimes raw, but always honest journey to love herself and find joy in the everyday, in family, and in the food and memories we share.
“This thoughtful, bighearted book is sure to be a hit with Bertinelli fans and those with an appetite for stories of hard-won self-acceptance. A warmly intimate memoir.”
- Kirkus Reviews
“In a series of brutally frank essays, Bertinelli looks back on the emotional struggles and triumphs of her life. By turns raw and inspiring, this contains a little bit of wisdom for everyone.”
- Publishers Weekly
Editorial Reviews
★ 11/29/2021
In a series of brutally frank essays, Bertinelli (Losing It), host of the Food Network show Valerie’s Home Cooking, looks back on the emotional struggles and triumphs of her life. Sharing her “efforts to, at sixty-one years old, set aside the land mines of denial, negativity, and self-hate” that she cultivated during her decades-long acting career, she contends with her weight gain after losing 50 pounds and posing on the cover of People Magazine in a bikini (“I was happy that day although I almost fainted on the set”); conveys her deep grief around the death of her ex-husband Eddie Van Halen, who died from cancer in October 2020; and revels in her joy at winning two Emmy Awards for her TV show. She doesn’t mince words when speaking of her body image issues, the challenges she faced as an actor (“the process made me anxious”), or how she overcame her shortcomings and learned to accept her appearance (“whether I was a size two, an eight, or a twelve, I was still me”). As Bertinelli works through her pain, she offers rewards in the form of sumptuous recipes—including, notably, her spinach-crab dip, her mother’s unbeatable lasagna, and Sicilian Chocolate Love Cake. By turns raw and inspiring, this contains a little bit of wisdom for everyone. (Jan.)
An honest look at being a woman in midlife, offering fellow women a blueprint for aging into loving oneself.” — USA Today
“This thoughtful, bighearted book is sure to be a hit with Bertinelli fans and those with an appetite for stories of hard-won self-acceptance. A warmly intimate memoir.” — Kirkus Reviews
“In a series of brutally frank essays, Bertinelli looks back on the emotional struggles and triumphs of her life. By turns raw and inspiring, this contains a little bit of wisdom for everyone.” — Publishers Weekly
06/01/2022
From her sparkling introduction to the closing credits, actress Bertinelli lays down the highs and lows of her recent life and explains how she got to this point in time, where she seems to have found the inner peace that she has long sought. This listening experience is like a one-sided, intimate conversation between friends, with a few recipes sprinkled in for good measure. The use of stream of consciousness to tell her story results in passages jumping back and forth in time. While this may have worked well in a book, it results in duplication of phrases of anecdotes within her narrative—enough duplication that listeners may wonder if the repetition is a production error. Bertinelli infuses a wide range of emotions into her reading, as the perky actress swings from cheery and bright with occasional chuckles when talking about love and kindness to a dark, profound feeling of sadness when recalling the loss of her parents and beloved ex-husband to the surprising wonder and joy in the peace she has found within herself after turning 60. VERDICT Many will relate to Bertinelli's story and applaud her honesty.—Stephanie Bange
08/01/2021
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Actor Valerie Bertinelli gives an affecting narration of her heartfelt memoir about love, family, grief, and food. In a warm, conversational tone, she urges listeners to be more intentional about finding joy in their lives. She is a delightful storyteller as she shares anecdotes about her television work, including her recent projects for The Food Network, as well as remembrances of cooking Italian recipes with her family and Indonesian dishes with her former mother-in-law. Best of all is her pride in her son, Wolfgang, and her affection for her late husband, musician Eddie Van Halen. The care this couple displayed for each other, even after their divorce, will inspire listeners to find the best in others. A rewarding listen. M.J. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
2021-11-24
The actor and Food Network host dishes up delightful recipes as she reflects on how she learned to see beyond a troubled self-image and embrace joy.
Bertinelli (b. 1960) seemed to live a charmed life throughout her adolescence and early adulthood. Catapulted to fame as a teenager in the 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time, she went on to win two Golden Globe Awards and marry her rocker “soulmate,” Eddie Van Halen. But her early TV successes did not bring about the movie career she desired, and her husband became a substance abuser whose volatility led a reluctant Bertinelli to file for divorce. These “currents of unhappiness, sadness, and discontent” caused her to struggle with her weight and, later, to take on work as a spokesperson for Jenny Craig. This decision, which Bertinelli thought would fix her problems, instead put her in an “all-or-nothing situation where the stakes were not only disappointment but also public shame and humiliation if I didn’t reach my goal, to say nothing of the devastation that this would cause privately.” Reflecting on her choices, the author realized that her poor body image was the result of growing up with parents who did not express personal pain and a mother who “ended up on a lifelong diet because she ate her feelings instead of working to understand them.” Ultimately, however, food allowed Bertinelli to redefine her life. A trip to Italy led to the publication of a cookbook, two popular cooking shows, and release from the self-isolating “dieting mindset” that had imprisoned her. The author now understands food as the thing that brings friends and family together even during dark times—e.g., the pandemic lockdowns or the final months of her beloved ex-husband’s battle with cancer. Interspersed throughout with the author’s favorite recipes, this thoughtful, bighearted book is sure to be a hit with Bertinelli fans and those with an appetite for stories of hard-won self-acceptance.
A warmly intimate memoir.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940178626344 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 01/18/2022 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 409,482 |
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