- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Press (HC); First Edition edition (Aug 25 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1594202311
- ISBN-13: 978-1594202315
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.5 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 658 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #192,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Book Description
The New York Times restaurant critic's heartbreaking and hilarious account of how he learned to love food just enough after decades of struggling with his outsize appetite.
Frank Bruni was born round. Round as in stout, chubby, and hungry, always and endlessly hungry. He grew up in a big, loud Italian family in White Plains, New York, where meals were epic, outsize affairs. At those meals, he demonstrated one of his foremost qualifications for his future career: an epic, outsize love of food. But Bruni's relationship with eating was tricky, and his difficulties with managing it began early. When Bruni was named the restaurant critic for The New York Times in 2004, he knew enough to be nervous. The restaurant critic at the Times performs one of the most closely watched tasks in the epicurean universe; a bumpy ride was certain, especially for someone who had never written about food, someone who for years had been busy writing about politics, presidential campaigns, and the pope. What qualified him to be one of the most loved and hated tastemakers in the New York food world? Did his decades-long obsession with food suffice?
Food was his friend and enemy both, something he craved but feared, and his new-job jitters focused primarily on whether he'd finally made some sense of that relationship. In this coveted job, he'd face down his enemy at meal after indulgent meal. As his grandmother often put it, "Born round, you don't die square." Would he fall back into his old habits or could he establish a truce with the food on his plate?
Born Round traces the highly unusual path Bruni traveled to become a restaurant critic; it is the captivating account of an unpredictable journalistic ride from an intern's desk at Newsweek to a dream job at The New York Times, as well as the brutally honest story of Bruni's lifelong, often painful, struggle with food. Born Round will speak to any hungry hedonist who has ever had to rein in an appetite to avoid letting out a waistband and will delight anyone interested in matters of family, matters of the heart, and the big role food plays in them.
About the Author
Frank Bruni was named restaurant critic for The New York Times in April 2004. Before that he served as the newspaper's Rome bureau chief and as a White House correspondent. His 2002 book about George W. Bush, Ambling into History, was a New York Times best seller. He lives in New York City.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Required reading if you love food,
By Lee Malcolmson (Winnipeg, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Born Round (Hardcover)
"Born Round" should be required reading if you think about food, are trying to lose weight, or particularly if you're mad at yourself for not losing weight. Author Frank Bruni's brutal honesty and courage 'to tell all' has the capacity to not only change lives, but maybe save a few too.If it's too easy to think about food for most of us, it's nothing compared to the opportunities for this food obsessed journalist and Pulitzer prize finalist. Ironically, as his career grows so do temptations and opportunities for sabotage. As press to the president he's offered eight meals a day. As restaurant critic for the NY Times he's required to eat a minimum of seven restaurant dinners a week. Perilous perks indeed! Some of his anecdotes are hilarious (but tragic) white lies to justify or rectify a food binge, to acknowledge or ignore expanding clothes size and some scarier food disorder behaviors which thankfully he has the courage to stop. His battles are no small feat and convincingly he makes instructive moments sound fresh. Based In Italy he embraces quality over quantity and accepts the simplest strategy, that food input has to balance with exercise output. His humility makes him accessible. Although a journalist of much repute, he doesn't boast about his accomplishments but frames them in terms of his weaknesses - "how much weight will I gain with this assignment?" Its charm, apart from the great stories and touching family memories, is his honesty. Anyone who loves food but needs to deny themselves at times will see themselves in his writing. "Born Round" is a truly entertaining and inspiring read. Bravo to a very courageous author!
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
inspirant!,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite (Paperback)
this book was really good.. really "inspirant" and did touch me. i do recomand it to food industrie people. as well to poeple that had or have problem dealing with food.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.1 out of 5 stars (110 customer reviews) 52 of 57 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
I devoured this book,
By Marysz "Marysz" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Born Round (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
I've always enjoyed reading Frank Bruni's down-to-earth restaurant reviews in the New York Times and his memoir, Born Round is written in the same easy-going and engaging style. Bruni writes about his food-centered Italian-American upbringing and his lifelong struggle to keep his weight under control. As a female reader, it was interesting to read about weight control from a male perspective. But what I really enjoyed most about the book were the portraits of his mother and Italian grandmother. He obviously loved them dearly and his portrayal of them is, to me, the heart of the book. Bruni is an open-hearted and accessible writer. Highly recommended!
33 of 37 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The joy and sorrow of food,
By wogan "the book reader" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Born Round (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
For many of us this will at last be a book to identify with. It seems most fight with addictions to something which can range from the most thought of - alcohol and drugs to physical exercise and what so many are fighting today - the addiction to food. This book is an excursion through Frank Bruni's ages of food - his love and pure joy of it engulfs and overwhelms his child hood and about the first 100 pages of his story, then falls into his growing battle with weight gain.His descriptions of food loved and memories of childhood foods and his Italian family can make you laugh in pure pleasure and remembrance. His ability to draw you into his feelings and life are readily apparent from the first page to the last; including his marvelous description as the middle child caught between the charismatic and confident older brother and the younger space cadet. Ah yes, but Frank can out eat any one and so begins his war with his body and proceeds with his narratives of what he's thinking and the food obsessions as he goes through his high school, college and professional years. So many of us can identify with dates postponed, old friends put off because weight has been gained and the diets that will start Monday with a binge before the diet and failure by Wednesday. This book is an interesting read, but could just as well be used as psychological study, one that can explain the lure of food to those who just don't understand. It can also be a cathartic read for those of us that struggle - you aren't the only one out there - recognize the cop outs we use: it must be the weight ...I'm not getting dates, not getting invited to parties, not getting promoted. This can allow you to see yourself or someone you care about. Bruni is astute enough that he sees how excess weight can result in your brain fooling itself that one does not look as large as one does and how it put his life on hiatus. He will not do this or that until the weight is gone, which will be sometime in the near distant future. Frank Bruni becomes a New York food critic, an amazingly tough job for anyone. At the risk of giving away the end of the book smaller portions and exercise win out; but then it ends with the realization, that as with all addictions you can fall again. Those of us that wish to understand either our, or other's food problems would be well advised to read this book. Of course those who would just like an interesting book to read would be well advised to read it too. 18 of 20 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brutally honest - the side of food you might not see.,
By Donna Lordi - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Born Round (Hardcover)
Pre-release customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program
There are those people who can eat a buffet-table full of food and not gain an ounce. You know them... heck, you may be one of them. For some of us, this is sadly not always the case. Frank Bruni's brutally honest memoir stands out as an accounting of a life where this may be true. Food isn't just food, it becomes a habit. A lifestyle. A ghost in your life that everything else revolves around. This is the story of his struggles and exaltations regarding it.Bruni is a great writer. This book is engulfing. It's a, forgive the phrase, entertaining melancholy, of sorts. It's no small task to write an autobiography that is always interesting, and for the most part, this book is. Most often, I skip the "childhood chapters" in such books, but here I found myself engrossed, and reading them. Perhaps it was because I've had to fight this struggle, myself. The transformation from being a slave to food, to liberated under it... truly, Mr. Bruni has conquered so much. We all must find peace with our ways of life, and this is not a tale about a struggle with food (well it is, of course) but so much the story of a man who has conquered his inner demons to fulfill his potential. It's inspiring and encouraging to read. |
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