Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously

Since reading enchanting books like Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires; David Shalleck’s Mediterranean Summer; and Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun, I’ve attempted to broaden my horizons and read some more “foodie lit”. So, in that vein, I picked up a copy of Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously at Half-Price Books a couple of weeks ago.

Boy, did I choose wrong.

At what point do you stop reading a book because it is, frankly, awful?

I really thought it was me until I, just this second, went to Amazon to get the book’s cover art – and saw the 2 1/2-star rating. You mean maybe, by some chance, it’s not just me??! Can I stop reading this book now?

Julie and Julia is not worth even the attempted show more read. The language! Way too much information on intimacy! More language!

I would not touch this book again with a ten-foot pole – and I haven’t even finished it yet. I have two hundred pages left and now realize that no matter how engagingly Julie Powell writes about lobster, chocolate, and – and I can’t even think of a third food item to round out that list! – this book is not worth any more time. It’s the Lord of the Flies of foodie lit. It’s the book I’ve been forcing myself to attempt to finish just for the sake of saying “I finished!” – much like Julie herself is forcing herself through Julia Child’s (bless her) Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I can’t take it anymore.

Please, dear readers, do yourselves a favor and Skip. It. Go watch Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in what I now realize is (while still imperfect) a very cleaned-up “Julie & Julia”. Enjoy Stanley Tucci as Paul Child. (Isn't Stanley fantastic?) Don’t think twice about the book. You’re not missing anything. show less

Julie and Julia is non-fictional chick lit, the true story of a funny, hip, frazzled and dissatisfied New Yorker who finds salvation between the pages of a Julia Child cookbook. On the eve of her 30th birthday, Julie Powell finds both her personality and her life increasingly intolerable -- and so does her husband. With nowhere else to turn, the unhappy secretary vows to cook each of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's landmark cookbook, The Art of French Cooking. The catch? She'll complete all of the recipes in a single year, and document her successes and failures in a blog.

Some readers complain that Julie is an insufferable narrator, so obsessed with her own neuroses that the food can't shine through. I disagree. This is not a book show more about cooking; it's a book about how cooking transformed a life, and to understand that, we have to understand the dark, stultifying place Julie is escaping from. Like a lot of chick lit heroines, Julie is sometimes annoyingly over-the-top, but I think she knows that about herself. That's why the book is overflowing with wry humor and witty asides. Not every ordinary person can write about her life in an interesting way, but Julie Powell brings her marriage, her friendships and her food to equally vivid life. When I think back on this book later, no doubt I'll remember wacky hijinks with bone marrow and thymus glands, but more than that, I'll remember feeling like I found a kindred spirit. This book encapsulated so many of the things I believe in my own life: that food is sexy, that salvation comes from unexpected places, and that happiness comes from following our own eccentric dreams in unique directions. show less

Unlike many of the other reviewers here, I really enjoyed Ms. Powell's sense of humor which today is rare with new authors. I also felt the book had MUCH more to offer with respect to the reality of her negligible cooking skills as compared to Julia Child. However, for those of us that have read Julia Child's book, we're quite aware her cooking skill took years to develop. Since I'm a big Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci fan I own the DVD of the movie and have to say it would have been far better were they to have shown Julie Powell as the incompetent cook she really was; it would have been MUCH funnier too. To me writing is art and like any art, the appeal varies from person to person.

Throughout reading Julie & Julia, I found Julie pretty consistently awful. Her preoccupation with and constant discussing of sex is off-putting and uncomfortable for me. The way she talks about mental illness and the mentally ill is disturbing and offensive. Her flippant comparisons of her everyday life to historical genocides and wars is jarring and also unendearing. Her approach to kitchen sanitation made me gag a lot while reading. And from the way she herself describes her relationships with her friends and husband, I cannot for the life of me figure out why they put up with her. Especially before she became a source of delicious French food.

All of that said, this book is a really interesting look back at early internet and blog show more culture, and the general atmosphere and culture of the early 2000s.The writing is good. And the story itself is interesting and engaging enough to make it worth a read despite my dislike of the narrator-author, which is quite a trick for a memoir. show less

With the humor of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs, Julie Powell recounts how she conquered every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and saved her soul!

Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that’s going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes. In the span of one year.

At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics show more and crépes, she realizes there’s more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye. With Julia’s stern warble always in her ear, Julie haunts the local butcher, buying kidneys and sweetbreads. She sends her husband on late-night runs for yet more butter and rarely serves dinner before midnight. She discovers how to mold the perfect Orange Bavarian, the trick to extracting marrow from bone, and the intense pleasure of eating liver.

And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life’s ordinariness through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance. show less

I was dubious about this book -- it started out as a blog and it was a "my year of" gimmick -- two strikes. As it happens, I wound up liking it a lot. I think it all depends on whether you like the author's voice or not -- as it happens, I did -- she's a wise ass (even about potentially fraught subjects like working at the government agency responsible for the 9/11 memorial) and she's funny as hell. At least to a certain type of sensibility. I would never in a million years dream of attempting something like The Project -- leek and potato soup is probably the most ambitious recipe out of Julia Child I'd even think of trying to make -- but I'm impressed that somone did -- especially someone with a job. Brava!

Originally published in 2005. I have to say the movie does not capture the character of Julie very well at all as written in the book. But, what a fantastic read! Julie writes like she talks, and it's the raw truth complete with "f" words throughout and lots of humor. Some parts had me cracking up, and some parts of it reminded me of myself like her over sensitivity to her blog and her out bursts and crying...my gosh if that's not me made over...lol. I do understand her purpose in creating this challenge for herself. I wish I would have thought of it first.

Now the movie portrayed a cluttered home, when in reality it was plum filthy and disgusting with maggots in the sink drain, globs of butter on the fridge, meat grease splattered show more across the walls and at one point they were inundated with a million flies in the kitchen. I guess they didn't always have time to clean up with them both working and her cooking up those difficult and time consuming French meals. Most of the time they weren't eating dinner until around 10 or 11:00 pm at night. If you enjoyed the movie, then you've got to read the book. It's so much better!!! show less