Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously

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Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously

3.51 of 5 stars 3.51 · rating details · 63,870 ratings · 6,147 reviews

Now in paperback-the format in which it's destined to become a reading group favorite-the most heralded and hilarious memoir of recent years:

Nearing 30 and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, Julie Powell reclaims her life by cooking every single recipe in Julia Child's legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the span of one year. It's a hysterical, inconceiva...more

Paperback, 307 pages

Published September 7th 2006 by Back Bay Books (first published September 28th 2005)

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Jun 21, 2007 devra rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: foodlit

it seemed so simple, and so brilliant and so the perfect type of book for me, i remember thinking as i perused--i forget what, probably the new york times--and saw a reference to julie powell's julie and julia project.

a woman who dedicated her year to learning how to cook.
like me. i hoped for inspiration--for my writing, for my cooking, for ideas that i could incorporate into both.

i immediately ordered a copy. or maybe i went straight to borders after work. i started reading the night i got it....more

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Aug 17, 2007 Jennifer rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: No One

I love the concept, I really do; not so much the finished product.

Had she not made the fuuny reference to my favorite line in Casablanca near the begininning of the book, I never would have been able to finish it. The thought of finding another gem like that made me stick with it even when I wanted to throw Julie out of a twenty-story window. The whiny, self-absorbed, melodramtic, narcissistic, trite (yet on occasion deliciously funny) Julie Powell decides to take up a project to add meaning to...more I love the concept, I really do; not so much the finished product.

Had she not made the fuuny reference to my favorite line in Casablanca near the begininning of the book, I never would have been able to finish it. The thought of finding another gem like that made me stick with it even when I wanted to throw Julie out of a twenty-story window. The whiny, self-absorbed, melodramtic, narcissistic, trite (yet on occasion deliciously funny) Julie Powell decides to take up a project to add meaning to her life, or at least to distract herself from dealing with it: She decides that she is going to cook every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and that she is going to do it in the time span of a year.

Julie never mentions how many hours she actually works in a week at her "oh pity me, the lowly secretary who still makes enough money to live in New York and buy enough food to cook every single recipe in the Julia Child MtAoFC cookbook" job, but I honestly have a very difficult time believing that she worked full time, commuted, did the grocery shopping, cooked every single recipe in the book, wrote a blog, and yet still had time to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I mean, really, does anyone that gave this book five stars actually cook?!?) She does make the point very clear that she didn't clean at all that year. And she did allow herself to gain an untold amount of weight rather than work out. I suppose that gave her a little extra time to devote to this project. And on top of all that she expected her husband and her friends to support her insanity, wholeheartedly and unabashedly. Eric should have kept a blog for the year about putting up with Julie!

For a book about cooking, there is a sad lack of description regarding the various recipes. Sure, she does go into detail about excavating bone marrow and dismembering lobsters, but what about the food? I didn't get the impression that she actually loves food so much as that she has a gluttonous relationship to it. Don't want to deal with your feelings? That's okay, just stuff them down with extremely high fat foods and ignore the consequences. I have no patience for this sort of self defeatist behavior; the average overweight american who refuses to take responsibility for their own health and instead assumes a false sense of pride over being carefree about their food choices. And then just accepts a dependence upon pharmaceuticals to manage the ill effects. Is it really any wonder that heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States?

This may have been an entertaining blog, but the "My bleaders like me, they really like me!" tone did not translate very well into a book. If you have any interest whatsoever in her story, save yourself the money (and grief) of reading this book and just read her blog [http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/0...]

(less)

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Feb 09, 2008 Katie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: foodie, i-expected-so-much-more-from-you, never-trust-popular-opinion, memoir, new-york

Completely and utterly disappointing.

I was so in love with the idea that Julie came up with: to recreate each of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I never had read her blog before, and my expectations for the book were high.

Unfortunately, Julie is a completely repulsive, unappealing and vulgar human being. Her self-deprecating - humor, was it? - didn't make me find her charmingly witty; rather, I just believed what she was telling me and decided that she was i...more

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Mar 27, 2009 D rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of chick lit, fans of self-flagellation, fans of maggots

Recommended to D by: Janet

Shelves: cooking, memoir, nonfiction, horror

Julie disappointed me. Her tone was tired (I've rassled too many self-loathing Gen Xers who think that airing their dirty laundry is fresh and shocking; it's not; ever heard of reality TV? it's merely degrading; if it's dime-store therapy you're seeking via the blogosphere, good luck getting stable, coherent advice from your comments section). Additionally, she thought insulting her husband was funny, admitting to maggots under her dish drainer a good romp, and marital infidelity blase'. I have...more

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May 12, 2008 Firecooked rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: foodie-books

The book is written by Julie Powell, about her 1 year self-imposed challenge to cook everything in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of Fine Cooking. The project was motivated by feeling stuck in her job (a low level drone in a government office) as well as rebellion towards the whole Alice Waters, locovore, trendy foodie things. I instantly connected with the author – she was a Buffy the Vampire fan (the blog was going on during the last season), found the act of preparing food very sensual, and...more

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May 16, 2010 La Petite Américaine rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: auto-bios-etc, frenchie_stuff, food, rants

Author Julia Powell is a mix of many people. From page one when she tells us she sold her own eggs to pay off credit debt, she is much like the dreaded person seated next to you on a long-haul flight that proceeds to tell you their life story in a matter of minutes. She is also the TMI girl that we all know, who contemplates the smell of her burps and piss, bitches incessantly about her job and Republicans, describes smelly cocks, drinks too many cocktails, tells us she sleeps with her face on h...more Author Julia Powell is a mix of many people. From page one when she tells us she sold her own eggs to pay off credit debt, she is much like the dreaded person seated next to you on a long-haul flight that proceeds to tell you their life story in a matter of minutes. She is also the TMI girl that we all know, who contemplates the smell of her burps and piss, bitches incessantly about her job and Republicans, describes smelly cocks, drinks too many cocktails, tells us she sleeps with her face on her husband's ass, says fuck every other word and undoubtedly finds herself witty and funny while being oblivious to the gaping jaws and cringes of those around her. She smacks and insults her loving and patient husband while contemplating cheating on him and living vicariously through the lives of her slutty friends, both single and married. (I smell a divorce cooking.) In short, she is the loud girl we all wish would shut the fuck up.

She also started a year-long cooking/blog project -- an idea given to her and set up by the very husband she treats like garbage -- to cook every recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She proceeds to alter and screw up recipes, partly due to their difficulty, partly due to her bad planning, and mostly due to her own stupidity: i.e., boning a fowl isn't that difficult so stop stressing about it; why don't you try asking the butcher if he can slice the bone marrow for you instead of trying it yourself and making a disgusting mess?; please don't tell us about getting lobster meat out with a tweezer. We are, of course, supposed to laugh at this and find it all funny. Ha. Ha.

As she embarked on this culinary journey, I couldn't help but remember that she'd mentioned having three cats and a python and being disgusted that this was the environment in which she'd be cooking. But no worries. She will of course tell us about the cat hair in the kitchen and in the food along with the dead mice for her snake shoved in the same bag as her cooking ingredients. And the vegetables falling on the rotted out kitchen floor, which she naturally picks up and throws into the pot. And the flies in her kitchen. That lead her to find the maggots. In her kitchen. Yummy.

Julie ends up getting lots of media attention, a big blog following, a book/movie deal out of the whole thing. An ignorant reader like myself gains a new appreciation for the complexity of Julia Child's recipes and something like (but not quite) admiration for the author actually going through with cooking every recipe in the book.

This will not go on my "sucked" shelf, as is certainly didn't suck. I give it one star for being very readable and for being a somewhat touching story of how one nobody became somebody all by herself. I simply didn't like her tone. I just couldn't take it.

I hear she has a sequel coming out next month, this time about being a butcher. Would I read it? Absolutely. Not because I want to read about her mutilating dead animals and describing even more bodily functions we don't need to know about. Really, I'm dying to know if she divorces that kind husband who was by her side the whole time. I'm betting she did. (less)

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Apr 22, 2008 Jonathan rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: food, time-i-wish-i-had-back

I read The Scavengers Guide to Haute Cuisine, and I really liked it. I figured this book would be along the same lines. Yeah, well, it wasn't. Instead of a book about cooking, it was a book about a whiny, pseudo-intellectual woman who tries to cook because her life is otherwise crappy. Please tell me how cooking an entire Julia Child cookbook will improve your life. Actually, don't, because that is the premise for this book and it sucked.

Oh, and reading about her husband was cringe-worthy. This...more

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Dec 30, 2007 Christine rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who truly love food and no one else

I think there's an unfortunate trend that people follow these days, particularly women, to verbally criticize themselves in a hyper self-aware manner, as if recounting all of their faults (real or imagined)will not only amuse the listener, but prove that they are stoic-even good humored-about being the biggest, fattest, ugliest, ding battiest failures to ever grace the earth.

"Doesn't he get it? Doesn't he understand that if I don't get through the whole book in a year then this whole thing will...more

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Sep 06, 2009 Petra X rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-true-story, food-diet

I can see how this book was a successful blog, its more a series of snacks than a grand a la carte meal in a French restaurant. The endless repetition of her hatred for Republicans (if you aren't an American, which I'm not, this doesn't make a lot of sense) and her job (if you've ever been a secretary, which I was, this does) and the use of her favourite words fuck and suck, neither of them used sexually, probably give you the flavour of this slight one-note book. A snarky, sarky, endlessly-whin...more

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Sep 27, 2009 Julie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Julie Powell was a 29 year-old temp living in the outer boroughs and suffering from late-20s ennui and the kind of despair that comes from hating your career and thinking you should have done more with yourself by now. To give herself a goal - something I can very much sympathize with - she decided she would make all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. She also started a blog to chronicle her (mis)adventures. This book is an outgrowth of that experienc...more Julie Powell was a 29 year-old temp living in the outer boroughs and suffering from late-20s ennui and the kind of despair that comes from hating your career and thinking you should have done more with yourself by now. To give herself a goal - something I can very much sympathize with - she decided she would make all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. She also started a blog to chronicle her (mis)adventures. This book is an outgrowth of that experience.

From the start I saw some crazy parallels to that book that so gets the bile rising in my throat - Eat Pray Love. Turns out, Liz Gilbert was actually a mentor and reviewer of Powell's book. Both are white, middle-class women who can turn a phrase who decided to add meaning to their chaotic lives by creating wildly over-structured plans of action.

On the one hand, Julie Powell is probably more likeable than Liz - more honest in her self-deprecation, and more charming in her witty cynicism. Point for Julie.

On the other hand, Julie's book structure did not work as well as Liz's, though it pains me to say. The book read a lot like a blog that had been sloppily edited into a book.

I appreciated Julie's honesty about her temper, her relationship with her husband, and her struggles with despair - she came off, to me, as a sympathetic protagonist. But on the other hand, her honesty tended to feel overboard and often, added for shock value. I could give a f*** about her potty mouth - hello have you met me? - but I would have loved to have been spared the details about her absolutely filthy apartment and questionable sanitary habits, for example.

Probably the biggest problem with the book is that it was marketed as a book about cooking, when in fact it was just a relatively shallow autobiography with few larger lessons or takeaway points. It was an average, semi-well-spoken woman's memoir as she approaches the age of 30. I know about 100 ennui-suffering, confused, smart, well-spoken gals hovering around the 30-range; why am I reading Julie Powell's story and not theirs?

I would imagine, moreover, that the foodies who picked up this book were PISSED about the lack of attention given to the cooking process and the food, and about the over-attention given to Julie's feelings, mood swings, and tendency toward TMI.(less)

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Oct 02, 2007 Lena rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

There are some inspired moments in Julie Powell’s memoir of the year she spent cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Powell can be a very funny writer, and the book is sprinkled with abundant samples of the snarky wit that no doubt made the blog on which this book was based so popular. Her topic is certainly a rich one—the processes of making gelatin from actual calves’ feet or flaying a lobster alive while feeling a generous dose of liberal guilt certainl...more

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Jul 20, 2008 Benjamin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookmans-book-club

So I was with my wife when I picked up my copy for the book club at work. And of course she started immediately poking fun at my new taste for chick-lit. I was very quick to my own defense, asserting that as non-fiction, it couldn't possibly be chick-lit so there.

I was wrong. Because it is non-fiction, but not just about cooking. It's about cooking and her marriage and her friends and their marriages and sex lives and her job and her quarterish life crisis. That didn't make me mad though, what r...more

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Jul 27, 2007 Stefani rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

To me this is a book about finding sanity in structure. Julie doesn't know what to do with her life, so she manufactures a project...

By completing at least one new recipe a day, and blogging about it, she finds herself so consumed that she has little time to obsess about her dead-end job, and her possible infertility.

It reminds me a lot of "Rosemary Goes to the Mall," a podcast in which an art instructor makes a project of shopping from and getting a bag from every store in the Mall of America.....more

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Aug 10, 2010 Jean rated it 4 of 5 stars

“Julia leaned gamely onto her knuckles like some otherworldly primate god of
kitchens and good humor.”

Within the pages of this rather indulgent book, you can find many brilliant nuggets such as the one above. Though, Julie herself did not write the above brilliance. It was her old friend Isabel, who also happens to be one of her myriad of devoted blog readers (or bleaders as Julie refers to them). In one of many hilarious blog replies deliciously sprinkled throughout the novel.

Now, the relevants...more

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Feb 19, 2008 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I love the concept- the story of the author working her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking one recipe at a time, skipping nothing. At its root it's a true life adventure- something I can experience vicariously.

On the other hand, sometimes the execution is flawed. (I *really* didn't want to know about the maggot infestation in the author's kitchen, I know my kitchen isn't perfectly hygenic. But maggots under the dish drai...more

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Aug 19, 2007 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: food

I had started poking around Julie Powell's blog rather late in the game of her writing it, so it was very hard to catch up with her adventures in cooking. I looked forward to the book, which I expected would tighten the diary structure and take us through a cohesive story. Boy, was I disappointed.

This book is a mishmash of anecdotes about Julie Powell's life that spring off of her central narrative without rhyme or reason. I think I could forgive that, if they were interesting anecdotes, but the...more

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Feb 12, 2011 Diane rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Saw the movie - had to read the book. So far, I have my reservations, but I'm not very far in yet.

I read a few more chapters and gave up. The author rambles - and not in a good way. I could not work up any interest in the folks in the book - just didn't care what they did next. Combine that with the author's potty mouth, and it's back to the Library to find a book worth reading - maybe Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child.

This is one of those rare examples of the movie being a lot...more

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Apr 24, 2008 Anneke rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If you want to read about the very self-absorbed author, this book might be a good fit for you. If you want to read about cooking Julia Child's food, go elsewhere.

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Jun 05, 2009 Julia rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009-list

The Julie/Julia project was the first blog I really read, thanks to Amanda Hesser's NYT article, way back in 2003. Julie Powell's blog introduced me to the possibilities of blogs - their limitless capacity for irreverance, how a project could really keep things focused, the world of the commentbox and what it added to the discussion. I liked some of it and some of it - her constant cursing - I did not. (What can I say, I live in a country where calling someone a cow is a serious insult, I'm way...more

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Mar 19, 2008 Rachel C. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fic, food, year-in-the-life, movies-and-tv

Not enough about the food - Powell really only describes making about 25 of the 500+ recipes she refers to in the title. Granted, she didn't start out as a very good cook but she seemed to have a lot of difficulty with the simplest of tasks. As I recall, not one person in my culinary school class had problems making mayonnaise by hand, even the first time around. Powell doesn't master mayonnaise until almost the very end, but somehow managed to debone a duck easily on her first try. I'm not sure...more Not enough about the food - Powell really only describes making about 25 of the 500+ recipes she refers to in the title. Granted, she didn't start out as a very good cook but she seemed to have a lot of difficulty with the simplest of tasks. As I recall, not one person in my culinary school class had problems making mayonnaise by hand, even the first time around. Powell doesn't master mayonnaise until almost the very end, but somehow managed to debone a duck easily on her first try. I'm not sure how that works.

Powell notes that she wrote a blog during the year of cooking (the book came after) and it really shows. Lots of minutiae about her everyday life, her marriage, her crappy New York apartment, etc. She comes across as a Bridget Jones-type, by turns adorably inept and inexplicably insane.

My two favorite passages are below:

"If I had thought the beef marrow might be a hell of a lot of work for not much difference, I needn’t have worried. The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly-too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there was something more than that, even. What it really tastes like is life, well lived. Of course the cow I got marrow from had a fairly crappy life – lots of crowds and overmedication and bland food that might or might not have been a relative. But deep in his or her bones, there was a capacity for feral joy. I could taste it."

"I baked David Strathairn absurdly complicated pecan-cornmeal cookies… I can’t imagine anyone – a few of the more repressive Islamic societies aside - who would consider baking an act of adultery. Still, for Eric, knowing what he knew of my proclivities, watching me roll out thin layers of cornmeal dough, sprinkle them with chopped pecans, cinnamon, and melted butter, then lay another layer of dough on top, and repeat over and over with infinite patience, must have been a little bit like noticing I’d gotten a bikini wax and a tight red dress the day before leaving for some business convention in Dallas. He didn’t do anything but roll his eyes and grumble with careful good humor, but he knew what I was doing."

(less)

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Apr 03, 2009 W.B. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: foodies, iron chef fans, julia child fans, people who like light books

Recommended to W.B. by: just found it

Okay, light fare. It's fun. She's quite funny sometimes. You learn a bunch of interesting things about French cooking, and how insane the French are sometimes in how they think food should be prepared. You'll get hungry a lot reading this. And you get to see Julia Child's funny, sometimes foul-mouthed, off-air personality just a little bit through excerpts from her letters.

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Jun 10, 2009 April rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 52-books-in-52-weeks-2009, foodie-books, memoirs

I was a little disappointed by this book, but overall it was okay (if that makes sense).

What skeeved me out is the author's repeated mentions about how dirty her apartment was including cat hair & maggots in the kitchen. Her friends are braver than I am, but I wouldn't eat anything she made in a place that sounds like this. In addition, she had camera crews, TV interviewers, & a food critic at her house with it in a similar condition. I would have hoped that she could at least have hired...more

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Sep 06, 2007 Courtney Payne rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Did not love like I had hoped I would. I am a HUGE Julia Child fan and I love the whole idea of cooking every recipe from Julia's MTAOFC in a year and blogging about it. However, I wish I was aware of the blog when she was actually in the midst of the year long project, rather than reading her synopsis years later in book form.
I have to say however, that Julie is frickin' funny. I laughed out loud several times and appreciated her wicked honesty, but the book just did not work as a whole.
Did an...more

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Mar 12, 2009 Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: foodie-related, memoirs

I finished the book last night and really enjoyed it. In her final summary, Julie Powell talked about presence, joy and love of Julia Child. Almost...almost made me cry. I hope that the pending movie can get past the slapstick comedy of Julie Powell and the larger than life caricature of Julia Child and hit on that emotional context. But really, this is a fun book. In the first half I was reading it with my copy of MtAoFC!

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Jul 24, 2009 Andrea Homier rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Okay, okay, maybe I was a little too hasty in dismissing this book right away as uninteresting fluff full of the author's self-absorption. What I have to say now is that the book is, well, seriously uneven.

Julie Powell is obviously a literate person with, at times, wide perspectives and the capacity for reflective thought, plus a witty sense of humor when it comes to dissing Republicans, all highly admirable qualities. I just wish one did not have to get through so much tedium to find those lit...more Okay, okay, maybe I was a little too hasty in dismissing this book right away as uninteresting fluff full of the author's self-absorption. What I have to say now is that the book is, well, seriously uneven.

Julie Powell is obviously a literate person with, at times, wide perspectives and the capacity for reflective thought, plus a witty sense of humor when it comes to dissing Republicans, all highly admirable qualities. I just wish one did not have to get through so much tedium to find those little nuggets. About 80 percent of the book is interesting in a cocktail-party-tidbit interesting way: a fact is mentioned and someone replies, "hmmm, didn't know that" or "interesting, interesting" while rocking the head slowly and then the "scintillating" conversation moves on. Not much to go on for 307 pages. But, then her conclusive ending come through, in which she talks about the joy of "finding one's way." She doesn't do it particularly profoundly, she doesn't do it particularly elegantly, but she does it. And it makes it better. (She also has an inspired entire chapter on sex and cooking (See "Flaming Crepes").)

On the downside, the story is nowhere near weighty or thoughtful enough to intersperse the Paul and Julia Child historical fiction vignettes into the mix . . . wierdly, I think Julie's story should be kept strictly separate from Julia's. We will have to see if the movie achieves what the book could not.

I have to say that for someone as whiny as Ms. Powell was in her late 20s and during the Julie/Julia project, she was a hell of a hard worker and she has inspired me (NOT a 29-year old energetic young woman with an amazing able-bodied husband, but a middle-aged, chronically fatigued woman with an amazing disabled husband) to whine less, get to work on time more, and fix a real meal for dinner! I do admire the woman's hustle, even if her housekeeping was really truly less than to be desired. (For her, I hope she can afford maid service now).

I remain intrigued by her project, would never ever attempt anything like it myself, and wish I had read her blog during the Julie/Julia project. (less)

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Mar 20, 2009 David Jay rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some very cute parts, and well written. Powell is likeable and the book is a quick and easy read. Most of the book is set in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, which I always like. Powell's apartment at the beginning of the book is a few blocks from where I live.

But I just didn't get it.

This is the story of a bored, depressed temp/secretary who isn't quite sure what to do with her life, wants a baby but isn't sure if she can have one, hates where she lives and so she decides to cook her way throug...more

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Apr 24, 2009 Brandi Rae rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-non-fiction, biography-memoir

In light of my new mindset on cooking and blogging I decided that the time had finally come to read Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell (the subtitle of which, given the upcoming movie release, has been unnecessarily changed to My Year of Cooking Dangerously). Julie is a woman who, in response to her unfulfilling job as a secretary and a rapidly approaching 30th birthday, decided that she is going to spend the year cooking every recipe in Julia Child’

...more

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Mar 20, 2009 Faith rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was surprised to find this book tucked in among the cookbooks in the non-fiction section of my local library. Though this is based on a true story of a woman who makes all of Julia Child's dishes in her cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the intro makes it clear that the author made things up and there was not a single recipe between its covers.

I have mixed feelings about this book. Despite the fact that the main character curses like a sailor and has an obsession with the topic o...more

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Aug 27, 2009 Allison rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, chick-lit, fiction

I really really liked the premise for this book.

I grew up watching Julia Child on weekends, until my Dad showed me that one SNL clip of her and I thought it was real. I didn't want to risk anymore accidental bloodbaths by watching her show.

Anyway. Love Julia Child, DISLIKED this book. The narrator is whiny, and self-deprecating in a way that I can only assume she thinks is refreshing and funny, but comes off as sad, unholy, step-cousin of Bridget Jones. Her constant exaultation of liberals, and...more

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Jun 01, 2008 Jen rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfic, food

Eh, never finished, didn't want to pick it up again. Too many books!

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About Julie Powell

Julie Powell was born and raised in Austin, Texas, where she first fell in love with cooking — and her husband, Eric. She is the author of a cooking memoir, Julie & Julia, which was released in 2005. Her writing has appeared in Bon Appétit, The New York Times, House Beautiful, and Archaeology Magazine, among others. She lives in Long Island City, Queens.

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“But the not-very-highbrow truth of the matter was that the reading was how I got my ya-yas out.

For the sake of my bookish reputation I upgraded to Tolstoy and Steinbeck before I understood them, but my dark secret was that really, I preferred the junk. The Dragonriders of Pern, Flowers in the Attic, The Clan of the Cave Bear. This stuff was like my stash of Playboys under the mattress.” — 49 people liked it

“The nice thing about having a friend who is crazier than you are is that she bolsters your belief in your own sanity.” — 31 people liked it

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title link	preview: Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously
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BBCode	[url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13746.Julie_and_Julia?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1344266223l/13746.jpg[/img][/url] [url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13746.Julie_and_Julia?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell[/url]

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously

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