I had some pretty good selfish reasons to want not to like "Born Round," New York Timesman Frank Bruni's memoir, but I was unable to escape the obvious: The book is terrific.

I won't give a full-fledged rave because, with his perch at the NYT, his incredible connections beyond, his stunning array of to-die-for blurbers, his impossbily accomplished resume, and his sophisticated-but-not-showy writing style, he doesn't need it.

Bruni could easily have supported a memoir just on the family and professional threads of his life — he covered both Bush 43 and, as Rome bureau chief of the Times, the pope, before becoming the Times food critic.

But the title reference is, in part, to his relationship with food, which was whacked out from an early age. It is just supremely rich to read about it, knowing that he's going to become one of the foremost food critics on the planet.

What most intrigued me is how, though he was highly abnormal with food, and how it controlled large swaths of his life, and how it led him to some painfully embarrassing moments — all of which I can claim for myself as well — he is resolving the problem in ways that are quite, quite different from how I'm doing it.

In "Fat Boy Thin Man," (also a very interesting tale and a very good book, albeit with a shoestring publishing and promotional plan not abetted by the New York Times or even my old paper, the Boston Globe — not that I'm miffed or anything), I make quite clear that the measures that were most important to my becoming a (fairly) normal, healthy family member, worker, and citizen of the planet aren't for everyone. (In short, what worked for me was therapy, rehab, support groups, and spiritual development.)

Bruni, meanwhile, seems almost just to have outgrown his demons, or better said, to have outrun them. It's not that he's free to do whatever he wants, but by choosing to take on regular exercise and other wholesome disciplines, he describes a much more ordered life than he experienced growing up.

Mine is much more ordered, too, and I, too, have disciplines in my life today. I didn't have them earlier, didn't seek them out, didn't want them when they were first (and second, and third, and fourth, and...) suggested, but I eventually worked them into my life. Perhaps that's just maturity, both for Bruni and for me. But we achieved/experienced it by pretty different paths.

That's one of the things about problem eating. It has many roots, many complicators, many impetuses. And, of course, many ways to reach a stand-off with it, to live within its peculiarities but to live successfully and zestfully nevertheless. "My" way is just one of them.