This was a very enjoyable reread. I love being taken to France with Julia and I love thinking about all that wonderful food. I wouldn't want to do all that cooking, however. I think the writing is adequate, but the story it tells is brilliant.

(written earlier) This is a re-read for me. I just watched the film Julie and Julia (for the umpteenth time) and thought I'd take another look at the original Julia Child book. The other one, by Julie Powell, I didn't like when I began reading it a few years ago and never finished. But this one has been on my favorites shelf at home since I first read it, and those books usually do well with a second (or third) reading. So far, so good. ( )

My Life in France is a memoir of France and the joys of cooking by the great Julia Child, assisted by her great-nephew, Alex Prud'homme. Through her eyes we dine at restaurants in Paris, Marseille, and Provence, learn to cook at the Cordon Bleu, and become an American celebrity after the publication of her best-selling cookbooks and the success of her TV show. She was also devoted to her husband, Paul Child, a career diplomat, and he to her; they seem to have had the happiest of marriages.

This is the second time I've read this memoir, and I loved it all over again. I watched a few episodes of her TV show The French Chef part way through reading it in order to get her sonorous voice into my head, and to revel again in her sense of fun, her love of food, her good humour, her height. (Child was 6'2".) Viewing made reading more fun as the joie de vivre present in her book I could now hear in her voice. I think I would have liked Julia Child very much, which is one of the marks of successes of a memoir, I think. You see things through the author's eyes, and approve her actions and thoughts.

Anyone who loves good food whether cooked in a restaurant or at home, any Francophile, anyone who enjoys an honest, quirky, and gently comic memoir will love this book. I did. Twice. There will be a third time, and maybe a fourth. ( )

I expected to enjoy this more than I actually did. Julia Child, French cuisine guru, arrived in Paris as a young woman with no particular cooking skills. But she became passionate first about eating, then about cooking - well and with understanding - the French classic repertoire. It became her life's work.

Though her enthusiasm is infectious, her deep knowledge obvious and admirable, and despite her francophilia, I rather wanted to get this book over and done with. I'm not the sort of cook who enjoys the fancy, rich classic cuisine of the time, or wants to have recipes in which every 1/4 teaspoonful matters, so she's not my sort of cookery writer. The story seemed sometimes disjointed, with episodes left up in the air.

For all that, she's a disarmingly warm and lively character, and her evocation of life in post-war Paris makes for an interesting read. But I probably shan't be looking out for more of her books, even though I could undoubtedly learn a huge amount. ( )

I'm reading this when I need a break from the novels. I adore it. Julia is just so cute!

It's hard to imagine how reading a book about food and recipes could be so interesting and entertaining, but it is, and down to the very last page. When you read how much time and effort Julia put into each and every single recipe in both Mastering the Art of French Cooking 1 & 2, you may want to locate copies for your own library. I But beware, Julia claims in the book, "My Life in France", that every edition required revisions and things corrected that had been missed or measurements that had been written out wrong, i.e.: 2 cups corrected to 2 tsps. These mistakes infuriated her because no matter how many times she went over it, she would always find mistakes. And Julia was a perfectionist!

You will find that Julia drops the "f" bomb a lot during the first half of the book..."french" words, phrases and sentences without explaining what they mean. You can choose to just skim over them or, as I did, download a free French pronunciation app onto your phone to help pronounce and decipher the meanings. Don't let this deter you from reading the book. It's still an excellent story, an excellent book. She revisits France for the last time back in about 1992, to pack up the rest of her and Paul's things. It's very sad that many of her friends and co-author had already passed on. She doesn't find leaving her beloved France as hard as she thought because it was the people who made France home and a part of her heart, not France, itself. ( )