Books read

Sorry I haven't been keeping up with dutifully updating all the books I've read and movies I've watched (although I've taken to defending 'Something Borrowed' as 'a rom-com that isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be, although it's still pretty bad').

But I finished Frank Bruni's Born Round early this morning, no thanks to my really strange sleeping patterns. It all started when I accidentally fell asleep in bed reading my iPad at around 11 last night. Woke up at 2.45am later, started reading for a while and chatted with Dave online and came across a really good idea for a potential non-fiction book. Started drafting out potential outlines and topic chapters, listing out people whom I think would provide really good interview fodder, and BAM, before I knew it, it was 5am already.

So I tried going back to bed, but couldn't fall asleep, no thanks to the ideas germinating in my head. So I ended up finishing Born Round, which I initially thought would be something similar to Ruth Reichl's Garlic and Sapphires. Afterall, they both held the position of food critic for New York Times, right? 

As it turns out, my expectations were so far from the truth. Instead of an expose of what it takes to be a food critic (like Garlic&Sapphires), Bruni's autobiography traces his difficult and often tumultuous relationship that he has with food - from loving it too much to his feelings of disgust with himself for his food and his yo-yoing weight loss and gains. At certain points in his life, he even battled bouts of bulimia and whatnot. 

Probably wouldn't read the book again, but damn. Throughout the book, Bruni would describe the home-made Italian food that his mother and grandmother would prepare, which would just make me want to go back to Rome to gorge myself on the awesome food again. :(