bookshelves:
foodlit
Read in February, 2007
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 ...more
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. that's how eager i was.
and then i put it down in disgust. it wasn't her language--i'm from new jersey, i can swear like a sailor and appreciate the release it offers in one's vocabulary. it was her attitude. whiny. despairing. woe-is-me.
that was my first turn-off.
several months later, i picked it up again, convinced that i had just given it short shrift. it's pretty rare, after all, that i don't bother to finish a book that i've started. i got much farther into the book this time--nearly halfway--and again, i got distracted and annoyed by her writing style. this, i rationalized, may have been because i had started the book all over again from the beginning instead of merely picking up where i left off, giving all of the original prejudices a chance to rear their heads again. i donated the book to a used book store.
and then, in spite of myself, i picked up another copy off of a discount table at barnes and noble. surely, surely the third time would be the charm. surely the information and hope that i had envisioned were somewhere within the pages of this conceptually brilliant book.
so this time, just last week, i decided to throw it into my weekend travel bag for a 3-hour train ride and give it one last try. i started from where i'd left off, approximately. i read it non-stop for 3 hours. and it did, at last, begin to grow on me. i shared her affinity for buffy, her inability to make pastry cream even after a dozen practices. i loved her chapter about her murderous rampage of the lobsters in new york city. and here is where i really found the weakness of this book--not in the tone, or the despair, or the language or the attitude. it was actually in the structure of the book itself.
julie seemed incapable of adhering to a timeline. everything was an anecdote that tied back to something else. and since she wasn't really writing chronologically, on a recipe-by-recipe basis, each anecdote had to be explained before it could be joined with the cooking example at hand. she interrupted her best chapter, about the lobsters, with a story about being home for christmas and finding out that her best friend wants to have an affair with a punk rocker from bath.
every successive example of seriously good writing was similarly misspent. her chapter about preparing to cook for a food reporter--interrupted. her chapter about the final month of the Project--scattered to the winds.
and above all, she doesn't write enough about the food, which is what i really wanted to hear. yes, i sympathize about her government-secretary-syndrome, but i don't want to hear abotu how your day sucked, i want to hear about cooking that day's recipe and how it affected your day. were you mad while you were shopping? did the recipe turn out? what, for heaven's sake, were you even making? how far into the Project are you?
(these tidbits were scattered across the chapter heads, but there was nothing more specific than that)
her writing lacked the consideration, the sensuality, even the day-to-day rhythm of, say, nigel slater's kitchen diaries. he made everything sound sexy. even the recipes that failed were still fantastic to read about. it made me think about how incorporate food and cooking into my daily life and how shopping for lunch can be a hassle, but it can also be the highlight of your day.
nigel made the food sound sexy.
julie talks about how cooking ruined her sex life.
enough said, right?...less
bookshelves:
chick-lit
Read in August, 2007
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 meanin...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 blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/0...
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Read in August, 2008
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...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 and were PISSED about the lack of attention given to the cooking process and the food, and the over-attention given to Julie's feelings, mood swings, and tendency toward TMI....less
Read in June, 2008
I wanted to love this book. Honest. I love to cook. I love to read about cooking. The premise of the book had everything going for it. Unfortunately I didn't heed Courtney's review before I started reading...
I feel like the publisher and marketing team got a little off track as they describe in the flap copy all about Julie's mission to create the wonderful and odd dishes that Julia Child included in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Yes, this was the basis for the story. However, the sum...more
I wanted to love this book. Honest. I love to cook. I love to read about cooking. The premise of the book had everything going for it. Unfortunately I didn't heed Courtney's review before I started reading...
I feel like the publisher and marketing team got a little off track as they describe in the flap copy all about Julie's mission to create the wonderful and odd dishes that Julia Child included in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Yes, this was the basis for the story. However, the summary should have instead read "Follow along as we regurgitate the blog content written by a very whiny woman who fancies herself a chef and a writer but is, in fact, merely a worker drone who hates her job (and goes on and on about hating her job). She swears her way through the 524 recipes in MtAoFC and screams at her husband and cries a lot and really doesn't talk about the cooking any more than she talks about hating her job or about her friends' love lives or her miserable existence in her tiny kitchen in her tiny apartment in Long Island City where no one will visit her unless she cooks for them. Boo hoo."
Okay, a tad below the belt, but seriously! I happened to read one or two reader reviews of this book before I picked it up, and I thought one reviewer was just sensitive and prissy for commenting on the amount of swearing in this book. Oh no. I'm no prim and proper lady, but for crying out loud, every single page has no fewer than five instances of f*** among other expletives. Sheesh! You really have to wade through them all to get to the content, and when you do you just get tired of reading how unfortunate she is for having to work at a job she hates and how damn frustrated she is at not being able to make gelatin or pastry dough or what-have-you.
Now I gave this book two stars because I didn't absolutely hate it (no matter what it sounds like). But I far from loved it. As I said, I really really really wanted it to be good, and I gave Julie plenty of chances (the entire book, in fact) to make me like her, or at least sympathize or find her charming or something.
I do think it's an admirable feat to have made her way through that entire cookbook in a year and to have had some great results and epiphanies (occasionally, though most of those are completely glossed over). But I really wish I didn't feel the urge to roll my eyes at most of the story that came between.
P.S. I just read that she won a Quills Award for this book. WTF?...less
bookshelves:
memoir,
non-fiction--food
Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
aspiring cooks in small kitchens, anyone who can appreciate a good home-cooked meal
This book is probably one of the books that set me down the path I am on now in terms of my relationship with food and baking. Not only was I inspired to eventually make a food blog (Tasty Fever!), but I was also given the notion that I didn't need a fancy-shmancy kitchen to turn out amazing stuff.
Julie Powell's story of ambition as a way to find herself through an uncommon means really struck a chord with me at the time I was r...more
This book is probably one of the books that set me down the path I am on now in terms of my relationship with food and baking. Not only was I inspired to eventually make a food blog (Tasty Fever!), but I was also given the notion that I didn't need a fancy-shmancy kitchen to turn out amazing stuff.
Julie Powell's story of ambition as a way to find herself through an uncommon means really struck a chord with me at the time I was reading it, and it still does now. As with a lot of memoir work, I can see how some people might not like Powell's voice in the book, especially when she's having a kitchen meltdown caused by the failure to pull a complicated French dish with bone marrow together. Perhaps since I'm used to reading blogs of my friends, as well as writing my own, I didn't mind what others may seem to mark as self-absorbed freaking-out. I liked the humour; she seemed to me like someone I could be friends with, or at least know and have a drink with time to time. In other words, her actions, cursing and crying, seemed honest and real to me.
Although at times I felt a little bogged-down in some of the relationship dramas she had with her friends, the book on the whole had enough personality to carry through the traumas of an ill-cooked dinner, as well as the wonders when everything, even despite a city-wide power outage, comes together beautifully.
In other words, her tale of cooking her way through Julia Child's book is a very personal and personable tale that I was able to relate to, having dealt with my share of tiny apartment and house kitchens. After reading the book, I began to little-by-little try out new recipes, which eventually erupted into the explosion of predominantly baked goods I now turn out weekly--thanks to the further inspiration of my snack-lovin' boyfriend.
You can find the original blog here. Julie Powell has a new blog out, too. You would think that with as much as I loved her book, I'd be keeping up with her latest shenanigans. Well, I'm lazy like that, plus I guess I've got my own blog to tend to....less
bookshelves:
foody-stuff,
real-stuff
Read in March, 2008
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 ...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
bookshelves:
foodie-books
Read in September, 2007
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...more
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 was trying to figure out what to do next with her life. The book is very entertaining, mixing stories about Julie Child and stories of her own family in with the trials of cooking the recipes (including treks to find bone marrow, brains and other offal). Her husband Eric is portrayed as a saint, her friends are nuts. Its fun to read.
But what really struck me was not the challenge of cooking, but the blogging. In addition to cooking every recipe, she blogged about everything she cooked. I went on-line and looked at some of the blogs. She blogged almost every day, and not just “I checked Filets to Poisson en Souffle off the list, didn’t puff but tasted good”… no, she went into details about procuring the ingredients, the moods of her husband, her cats, occasional Buffy references, how the food was prepared, what worked, what tasted good, and what didn’t. And it was entertaining… she had a huge following (after a while, she set up a way people could donate money to help buy lamb and more butter to keep the project going – and they did). She never talks about the challenges of blogging in the book.. things I find really hard, like making it witty (but not contrived), not offending others (however, that New York thing probably helps here), how personal to get, making a good story but not going on and on, punctuation and grammar good enough to make it readable. It has a happy ending, she found her real calling as a writer.
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Read in July, 2008
Read this book for my book club. This book is a story of a woman who is in a crummy job and feeling disillusioned in general when she becomes inspired to take on the challenge of cooking all 524 recipes in a Julia Childs cookbook in 1 year. She and her husband live in a tiny, rather junky apartment and these are serious recipes with some very unusual ingredients, so, naturally, the project falls into chaos at times.
It is apparent the events of the book really happened to this author and ...more
Read this book for my book club. This book is a story of a woman who is in a crummy job and feeling disillusioned in general when she becomes inspired to take on the challenge of cooking all 524 recipes in a Julia Childs cookbook in 1 year. She and her husband live in a tiny, rather junky apartment and these are serious recipes with some very unusual ingredients, so, naturally, the project falls into chaos at times.
It is apparent the events of the book really happened to this author and the book reads more like a journal or blog than a "story." No main problem, no crescendo, no real resolution- so, it was a book that I didn't mind reading but I had no problem putting down when I needed to and no burning desire to read in a frenzied rush to get to the end (my usual approach). Unsurprisingly to me, this book also reinforced what I already know to be true, which is that I don't really like to cook, certainly not anything fancy, and I can't imagine WHY in the world anyone would EVER go through that kind of trouble (and butter) to cook something that will be eaten in 15 minutes with only a pile of dirty dishes left in its wake!!!!
I did not feel particularly connected to any of the characters, including Julie, perhaps because I didn't feel I ever went through any real crisis with her. Her inability to find obscure ingredients or her struggle to cut the lobster just didn't inspire my emotions. Maybe I would have related more to her if her "project" were rescuing tons of stray dogs or something else... I guess that cooking just didn't speak to me. Nonetheless, so I don't sound like a total crab (no food pun intended!), I DID find the descriptions of the cooking techniques interesting just from a "knowledge" perspective. Since I don't cook at that level and probably never will, I did appreciate the exposure to the terminology and such. I also "get" the woman's need to validate herself and I applaud her efforts.
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Read in December, 2007
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 whol...more
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 have been a waste, that I'm going to spiral into mediocrity and despair and probably wind up on the street trading blow jobs for crack or something? He hates me, anyway. Look at him, curled over on his side of the bed like he doesn't want to so much as touch me. It's because I've got the stink of failure on me. I'm doomed..."
Now I like a little self-deprecation every now and again, but this book is founded entirely on the author's insecurities, which are mostly unfounded. The books foundation is rocky to say the least. This is clearly a bright woman and obviously very few people think they are the most abhorrent human being alive or the mortality rate in our society would sky rocket, so why bother with all of the abuse? She doesn't need it-her prose are clever and deliberate, and all of this "I hate myself" crap really clouds what she is trying to say.
Perhaps it's because she based this book on her blog, which REALLY lends itself to this kind of meta humor, but I'm sooooo sick of it. Go read about fistula in Africa and then tell me how depressed you are because you're making your own life miserable. Bah! ...less
Read in March, 2008
“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.
N...more
“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…
The year: 2002. The heroine: Julie Powell.
A sardonic 29 year old New Yorker, whose biological clock is ticking ever so loudly as she inches closer to the big 3-0.
She’s unhappily temping before finally going permanent in a dead end secretarial position. The horror.
After a trip home to Texas, she decides to steal a copy of her mothers “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. Which she often compares to “The Joy of Sex”. I won’t get into
the details of that.
At the urging of her husband, and frankly for reasons unknown to anyone, she decides to
cook her way through all 524 recipes in the span of a year. All the while, chronicling
her journey online for the world to see. Dropping quite a few f-bombs along the way.
If you think a cooking memoir by an inexperienced, obsessive, writer trapped in a bad job, crappy apartment and who lacks any self-control could be boring… then I recommend you take this culinary journey along with Julie & Julia to contradict all those silly notions. Foodie or not.
In the end, through all the aspic, liver and broken eggs permeates the aroma of hope and discovery. Along with the realization that no matter the age, it’s never too late to find yourself… and hopefully a book deal.
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bookshelves:
food,
nonfiction,
not_impressed
Read in August, 2007
recommends it for:
whiny, foul-mouthed people with a steel-lined stomach
This was a book that I finished, but didn't really enjoy.
I can appreciate that Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking came along at just the the right time in Julie Powell's life and I can appreciate the difficulty of rounding up Julia's ingredients, like canned onions and marrow bones and I can appreciate the frustration of working in a depressing, post-September 11th setting.
But I could not appreciate the casual mentions of sticky, filthy, cat-hair covered counters and reeking ...more
This was a book that I finished, but didn't really enjoy.
I can appreciate that Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking came along at just the the right time in Julie Powell's life and I can appreciate the difficulty of rounding up Julia's ingredients, like canned onions and marrow bones and I can appreciate the frustration of working in a depressing, post-September 11th setting.
But I could not appreciate the casual mentions of sticky, filthy, cat-hair covered counters and reeking body odor. Julie grossed me out! I fully admit that I don't have the stomach to eat nearly anything in Julia's cookbook, or even to touch raw meat, a chore I have successfully avoided all my life... but this woman's kitchen had maggots growing in it!
How do you not notice maggots developing in your kitchen? The kitchen in which you have hosted camera crews and food writers while making incredibly complex French dishes! How hard it is it to wipe down your counters? Especially in a kitchen where you are butchering lobster and deboning duck? You'd think you'd really want to stay on top of bacteria in a kitchen where you are marinating a leg of lamb for three days at room temperature. GROSS, Julie!
I found Julie's life anecdotes alienating, repulsive and depressing. They detracted from the point of the story, the reason she ever got a publishing deal and the sole reason any of her readers ever picked up her book in the first place.
So.... congratulations to Julie on turning her life around... on telling me about her friends weird and sad sexual dilemmas... for cooking her way through a cultural landmark cookbook.
But I don't think I'll be seeking out any more Julie Powell....less
Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in August, 2007
Highly dissapointed in this book. The only reason I gave it two verses one star was that it gave me an idea for my own cooking project. I plan to cook my way through one of my cookbooks once I get my place. Otherwise I think that this book lacked focus in that she jumps all over the place... from describing her boring job (and I mean that it bored me) to the project to excerpts from Julia's letters to her social life. The reason I bought this book was to read about her experiences about cook...more
Highly dissapointed in this book. The only reason I gave it two verses one star was that it gave me an idea for my own cooking project. I plan to cook my way through one of my cookbooks once I get my place. Otherwise I think that this book lacked focus in that she jumps all over the place... from describing her boring job (and I mean that it bored me) to the project to excerpts from Julia's letters to her social life. The reason I bought this book was to read about her experiences about cooking Julia's receipes not about her boss or friend that dates boys named David. I wanted to know what it was like working with weird animal parts and creating twenty-step sauces. She does go into detail here and there, but I wanted more more more. Julie also mentions the french title of what she is cooking but because 1. I don't know French and 2. I don't have a copy of the cook book - sometimes I had no idea what dish she was making. it would have been great if she noted the English translation if there was one. In some cases I was familiar with what she was referring to, but other times not so much. Alas as I said the second star was merely given as she did inspire me to start a cooking expedition of my own. I also found it interesting that Julie Child was 32 when she embarked on her cooking career which is the same age I am now. Otherwise, I had to force myself to finish the book which I did merely because I spent money on it and wanted to find out if she finished cooking her way through the book within her deadline. She did not provide any infinite wisdom at the closing of the project. It just kinda made me mad that I didn't think of doing this first and be able to stay home as a writer and have articles published about me....less
bookshelves:
memoir
Read in October, 2007
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 guil...more
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 certainly offer many opportunities for colorful commentary.
Despite Powell’s detail in discussing some of her greatest disasters while cooking from Childs’ book, she spends significantly less time on general food writing than you’d expect given the theme. This not so much a sensual celebration of food as it is the diary of a frustrated New York secretary who spent a year cooking like a madwoman. While some of Powell’s digressions away from her kitchen are entertaining, others seem widely off-topic and detract from the book’s focus.
Still, the book is generally pretty readable, though I did struggle at times with Powell’s tone. Her sharp sense of humor is not always enough to balance out her frequent griping as she struggles to complete her task while simultaneously working in a government office run by (gasp!) Republicans. While it was interesting to read how the popularity of her blog snowballed into national news coverage and a book deal, the book ultimately left me with little understanding of how the alchemy of the cooking process worked its magic on the author itself. Except, of course, for all the swearing it made her do.
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bookshelves:
food,
time-i-wish-i-had-back
Read in April, 2008
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-wort...more
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 wimp drinks vodka tonics, gets shaving tips from gq, and has regular, uncontrollable vomiting episodes. Hey guy, maybe when your balls finally descend from your body cavity you can write a book about that. Then both you and your wife can have lame books published.
For the sake of fair reviewing, I only made it through just over half of this before I became too repulsed to read on. So maybe it turns out awesome. Maybe she gets all the recipes cooked. Maybe her husband and her friends actually become interesting. I guess I'll never find out, because I know I'd derive ten times more entertainment from smelling my fingers than I would by finishing this book....less
I found this book mainly by accident. I guess I had seen a review somewhere of this story of a woman who spends her thirtieth year cooking every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". While wandering through the library I saw it on the shelf and thought "Why not?". As soon as I started reading I was hooked. A cooking book this is not, but a funny memoir about a disgruntled secretary living in New York and working on the insane project that is cooking 5...more
I found this book mainly by accident. I guess I had seen a review somewhere of this story of a woman who spends her thirtieth year cooking every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". While wandering through the library I saw it on the shelf and thought "Why not?". As soon as I started reading I was hooked. A cooking book this is not, but a funny memoir about a disgruntled secretary living in New York and working on the insane project that is cooking 524 recipes, it is! I had a great time reading it and even laughed out loud a few times. It is not a deep and meaningful, life-changing book but I don't think I'd qualify it as reading junk food either. More like an afternoon snack.
I think what has shocked me most of all is the amount of negative reviews this book received both here and on Amazon. Although I have to say that I don't think reading only one chapter of a book qualifies one to give a 'review'. At least not one that says more than "I couldn't finish this book". I guess some people were misled by reviews to believe that this book was more about cooking and less about Julie Powell (the author). Or some people were offended by her frequent use of the "F" word (clearly these people don't have television or watch movies, both of which have a tendency to be far more offensive than this book). Or they had a problem with her political views. Hello!! This is a personal memoir. Since when can you not have an opinion in your own book!?!? I guess I was just surprised to see so much hatred for a book that I really enjoyed....less
bookshelves:
memoir
Read in December, 2007
Bravo!! What a fantastic read! You know a book is delicious when a newly legal Manhattanite swears off a social life in favor of hopping into bed with her new paperback. I must have recommended the book to at least ten strangers who heard my uncontrollable outbursts of laughter and had to know what was making me cackle so heartily. Sometimes reading about those sticks of butter did make me feel a bit oily and full, but that Julie Powell, what a refreshing voice. Her wit and sarcasm and dept...more
Bravo!! What a fantastic read! You know a book is delicious when a newly legal Manhattanite swears off a social life in favor of hopping into bed with her new paperback. I must have recommended the book to at least ten strangers who heard my uncontrollable outbursts of laughter and had to know what was making me cackle so heartily. Sometimes reading about those sticks of butter did make me feel a bit oily and full, but that Julie Powell, what a refreshing voice. Her wit and sarcasm and depth of self-perception --albeit she makes no effort to hide her slight alcoholism or questionable hygiene-- she is so utterly human. I am astounded not so much by her project as by her ability to turn her year of crazed cuisine-art into a hilarious and inventive masterpiece.
I must admit, with the exception of her "tart-a-pa-looza" and her crepes, there were few instances when my unrefined palate was tempted to call her for a dinner invitation. But I would love nothing more than to just spend time in Julie's kitchen listening to her spew out random blog anecdotes and 17th century journal entries peppered with profanity. And that supremely sensual dimension she incorporates in her cooking after her covert pre-pubescent explorations of Dad's copy of the Joy of Sex. No wonder people do it in their kitchens!
This is the sexiest, most hilarious, heart-warming and even motivating book and it made my vacation. For anyone looking to truly relax and indulge, this is your ideal read. Bon appetite!...less
Read in January, 2006
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 t...more
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 drainer? Ewww eww eww!) As the book wears on, the story becomes less and less about the cooking and more and more about the how much the author hates her government job and her small apartment, the plumbing catastrophes that regularly happein in said apartment and the cast of kooky friends that drop in regularly.
Knowing that the book started out as a blog makes the prose a little more forgivable. Although the book is NOT written in "blog form", I can see where the narrative would have worked well when it was a blog. It's obvious the author felt the need to pad the story a bit to make it in full-length book, which I don't think was totally necessary. The filler it just that- filler.
The author supposedly had a multi book deal now. The problem is that I don't know if I would ever read another book by her. Maybe if she came up with another great concept. ...less
Read in May, 2006
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 known to man. Her self-deprecating - humor, was it? - didn't make me find her charmingly witty; rather, I just believed what she was te...more
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 known to man. 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 in fact the most disgusting person alive. The fact that she keeps her crappy apartment in filthy, squalor-like conditions (she had maggots growing in the kitchen that she was theoretically using on a daily basis) kinda made me want to throw up. If it hadn't been for my fascination with food and my love of Julia Child, I would have stopped reading (which is pretty rare for me).
The book isn't even about the cooking or Julia, not really, anyway. It's instead just a new platform for Julie to continue with her self-indulgent blogging.
PERFECT FOR: um...people who are bad at cooking? This book will turn them off so immensely that maybe their subconscious will make them think they never want to step into a kitchen again, thereby sparing the tastebuds of their loved ones....less
bookshelves:
bookmans-book-club
Read in July, 2008
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, wh...more
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 really made me made was how much I enjoyed it. It's funny! And it's a nice story. So what if it actually is complete chick-lit, right? Right?
Anyway, there were some minor things I found irksome. Throughout the Project, Julie mentions that cooking all these recipes have taken a toll on her weight and that she and her husband both have fairly crappy jobs. But she makes almost no mention as to the actual cost of cooking gourmet french food most every night for a year. Surely gelatin and marrow bones do not grow on trees.
Also, While I liked the self effacing humor of each kitchen nightmare, it would have been nice to be a fly on the wall to one or two more success stories, just to balance things out.
Overall I think Julie Powell convinced me that she is someone I might want to hang out with, but that's about it....less
