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Apr 09, 2008

Izzy rated it:

I think the reasons I wanted to read this book are that Julia's always thought of as a late bloomer, and because her travels were so influential in helping her discover herself.

Certainly, her life had great adventure.

Highlights: p. 268

Too tired and busy to go to France. "But then we looked at each other and repeated a favorite phrase from our diplomatic days: "Remember, 'No one's more important than people.'!" In other words, friendship is the More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Sep 09, 2008

Melissa rated it:

Oh, how I love and adore this book. It's one of the best I've read lately, combining as it does my love of France, Julia, and food in one funny, touching package. Julia Child was such a unique, eccentric, brilliant woman, and I'm always inspired when I realize that she struggled along at loose ends for years before finding her true passion and calling.

Her marriage to Paul Child is beautifully portrayed in the book. He was quite a worldly, erudite man, and very forward-thinking for hi More...

1 comment like (22 people liked it)

Sep 03, 2008

Tim rated it:

Lighthearted and fun recollections of Julia's first years in France. Highly recommended for anyone already enthralled by Julia, whether by her television programs or her excellent cookbooks.

Readers who do not know Julia may find the book a little too rambling, and a little too focused on food they've never tasted and have no idea what it even is (often she does not give translations for food names).

As noted in the introduction, the book was pieced together from conversation More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2008

Lisa rated it:

This book was largely ghost-written by a nephew of Julia's husband. Despite that, it was really quite good, and he spent hundreds of hours with her, listening to her stories and capturing her distinct vernacular. I had always suspected that Julia was an exceptional woman, and this book verified that for me. I expected a limited memoir of her years in France after she and Paul married, but it covered her time from then until around the time of her husband Paul's death in 1994. She arrived in More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2010

Mahlon rated it:

I've never been a fan of Julia Child, and whenever I ran across her show on PBS I'd make a conscious effort to change the channel, which was why I was surprised when My Life in France turned out to be one of the most well-written, engaging Autobiographies I've read in quite awhile. The book covers roughly the same time period as the movie Julie & Julia except that it extends into the mid-70's and discusses the beginning of her TV career and the writing of her second book. Even though it was comp More...

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jun 28, 2011

Kelly rated it:

I did not grow up on Julia Child. I’m too young to have watched her TV show, and my mom wasn’t the type to own any of her cookbooks (we stuck to mostly Italian recipes handed down from my dad’s mom and ranch-style cooking- or, if we were unlucky, my British nanny’s “traditional” English dishes she insisted we try). I barely knew who she was before I started cooking a few years ago. I admit that I wasn’t really interested in her until the recent movie Julie and Julia, which definitely made me wan More...

26 comments like (23 people liked it)

May 24, 2008

Yvonne rated it:

This was a Christmas gift from my best-friend-forever Ariel, and a perfect read not only for foodies and urban farmgirls like myself, but anyone who's going through the "if not now, when?" blues. As some previous Goodreaders have already noted, it's a bit of a revelation to read about someone so famous (or infamous, if you've seen Dan Ackroyd's histrionic impersonation of "Jules") being such a late bloomer. This is America, and even though Miss Thing found herself in France, More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Dec 12, 2007

Tien rated it:

I kind of think of Julia of the best example of most everything, including:
- a bad cook (she was really, really horrible when she started);
- a great cook (obviously)
- a wayward child/late bloomer (didn't touch a pan until she was 36)
- a once-spoiled-now-reformed upper classman (grew up in Pasadena)
- what to do when living in France (eat, learn to cook, eat more)
- a foodie (not snobby, just loves food)
- an American (see above, re: Pasadena)
- a teac More...

2 comments like (11 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Valerie rated it:

I loved this book! I learned about it after hearing a discussion about it on NPR shortly after publication. I'm not sure exactly what makes it so compelling to me, because I am not a cook, but I think it's the unpretentious look-at-me-ness that was Julia Child. Alex Prud'homme carefully captured Julia Child's voice and the force of her personality. Even when at times she seemed a little unlikeable, you're still drawn in by her fearless and adventurous nature. This book is also a great slice of l More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 16, 2008

Agnes rated it:

I love Julia Child, it turns out! This memoir is fun and I want to live her life. I want to live in Paris, Marseille, Oslo and Boston too, creating sumptuous recipes, hanging out with James Beard and decorating a summer house in Provence. Seriously, why am I not her? I wouldn't even mind being dead since 2004.

I am totally convinced that her cookbooks are the foremost authorities on French cooking, now that I've seen how many times she would experiment with a basic recipe to get i More...

5 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jun 06, 2011

Juju rated it:

My Life in France reads like a diary. While it is a time capsule and window into Julia's heart and life, it is exceedingly slow and often tedious. Sadly my interest waned and I ended up giving up on it. But I did walk away from My Life in France with an increased sense of respect for the unapologetic, unconventional, and undeterred Julia Child. She was brave, tenacious, and direct. I think I would have loved her as a person. No matter what life did or did not give her, she never stopped to compl More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 10, 2009

Beth rated it:

Although I picked up this book because of the movie, "Julie and Julia," I soon forgot Meryl Streep and got caught up in the world of Paris just after WWII. Child's descriptions of her life in Paris in the late 1940s/early 1950 definitely made me wish I could have been there. She and her husband, Paul Child (a former OSS officer, then later a sort of cultural attache with the Foreign Service) lived life to the fullest there -- eating amazing food (out, and at home), drinking lots of More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 08, 2008

amy rated it:

This is a really fun read. (Except the part where she experiments with making the best mayo ever. Blech.)

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 12, 2008

Shippseattle rated it:

April 4th 2006 by Knopf
binding Hardcover
isbn 1400043468 (isbn13: 9781400043460)
pages 336
description In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child’s years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found ‘he...more

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In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child’s years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found ‘her true calling.’

From the moment the ship docked More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 13, 2008

Kate rated it:

This book is like having a nice glass of wine and some bouillabaisse with an old friend-- Julia takes you along her journey from bureaucrat to francophile's wife to avid amateur chef to the woman who changed cooking in America and makes it sound like a christmas letter to old friends. You see, old Julia (she used to be Julie McWilliams) moved from Southern California to Smith (go women's college alumnae!) to Ceylon (now India), met up with her "egghead" (and shorter-- Ms. McWilliams wa More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 02, 2008

Rhonda rated it:

ooh i loved this book. Julia has way of writing that invites you in. It's like you are old friends talking about her memories. Some things I learned about Julia.
• She was tall (same as me) and had big feet (same size as me 12)
• She and her husband Paul never ended up having any kids although they tried for years.
• Julia moved to France after her and Paul were married since Paul worked for the US governent. He promoted the Us culture to the French. He worked all day and she learned More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 23, 2008

Becka rated it:

Engaging, lively, and chockful of descriptions of both decadent and simple French dishes, Julia Child's memoir of her five years in la belle France during the late 1940s and her subsequent returns to the country for cooking consultations and vacationing in Provence, is a refreshing, fun and breezy escape from the travails of modern life in an increasingly impersonal, fast-paced world. Not only does the book describe how Child became renowned for her cookery, it also paints an evocative picture More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 16, 2007

Deborah rated it:

There is only one Julia Child. Having see one of her many kitchens at the Copia museum in Napa, Ca (there is one at the Smithsonian as well), I had a desire to learn a little bit more about the woman who brought French cooking to America. I had greatly enjoyed the book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, although I never have had any desire to try my hand at haute cuisine. Her descriptions of food, France, life, and love are inspiring, especially to think she was we More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 02, 2008

Christine rated it:

I love Julia Child, and she is one of my lifetime heroes. This book was an amusing and thoughtful window into her life and thought processes.

She found her life calling for French cuisine when she was well into her thirties, and approached the topic with curiosity, discipline, and fierce energy. I think this means that there is still hope for me to find my true career and inspiration.

If you want to learn how to do something, or change your life, it requires hard work More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Aug 30, 2007

Jamie rated it:

Man, it took me a long time to read this book. I had a really hard time getting into it, but once I got to the point where she began to learn to cook I found it was a much better book. (Did you know that there was a time when Julia Child wasn't such a good cook? I found that to be both comforting and inspirational.)

This book did it's job - I'm now hunting down more of her cookbooks to order and learn from. She also had another good piece of advice in there when she said that she More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 23, 2011

Victoria rated it:

An enjoyable, but not compelling, read, with short-enough chapters that allowed me to get through the book in a couple of weeks of odd moments. I grew up watching Julia Child on tv but had no idea of the person behind the French Chef. Her path from non-cooking, California girl to expert French cook and author made for interesting reading, especially her experiences in France. I did find the book a bit superficial, but maybe that's how it managed to stay enjoyable.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 25, 2009

Helen rated it:

What a beautiful story of a life well lived. I realy knew nothing of Julia Child except that she had a cooking show in Channel 8 (that my daughter used to watch with her grandmother while she drank her bottle) and the SNL satire of her.

This book tells the story of a woman who embraces life. All of it. How she came to travel the world, love food, her marriage to an unlikely match, their devotion to each other and her eventual success as a innovative cook that changed how the world More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2008

Rachael rated it:

My sister gave me this book for Christmas, and I absolutely loved it! I've always been a fan of Julia Child, and this book was just marvelous. Lively, entertaining--it wasn't so much a food memoir as simply a journey through France. This book made me really understand why Julia Child is such a unique cook--her driving need to have every recipe so perfected so that even a novice cook can achieve the desired result is something that I really resonated with. I loved reading about her endless ex More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 15, 2007

Pdxstacey rated it:

I listened to this book on CD. I enjoyed listening to the story while folding laundry and riding the MAX. Now I feel a bit left out as apparently there are pictures in the book?

I found it inspirational and entertaining. Her culinary and cultural enlightenment made me feel perhaps going to work and watching tv every day is not enough.

I did feel inspired to try some French food, so I went to Le Pigeon.

I had "foie gras cream soup" which I later tit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 27, 2008

Mary rated it:

I had always admired Julia Child but that appreciation grew after reading this memoir. She came from a privileged life in Pasadena but she sought adventure is the OSS during WWII in Asia. She became smitten with Paul Childs and pursued a relationship with him. At first the more sophisticated Paul was not taken with the very tall and gawky girl but they became good friends. He eventually falls in love with Julia and they get married. Paul gets an OSS assignment in Paris and Julia finds hersel More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Alicia rated it:

Although this book describes Julia's love of France and the time she and her husband spent there, it is really about the creation of "Mastering The Art Of French Cooking" 1 and 2. After falling in love with the food (and the country), Julia takes a cooking class at the Cordon Bleu and finds her true calling as a chef, teacher and advocate of French cooking.

This was such a fun read. Julia's personality shine through and you get a very real sense of who she is. It also vividl More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 22, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

Julia was a remarkable woman! I doubt she even realized just how extraordinary she was. Her greatest successes came at an age when most people think their best years have already passed them by.
I'm not fond of French cuisine or rich foods in general, but there is much to enjoy in this book, even if some of the food doesn't sound appealing.
I admire her enthusiasm and eagerness to just dive in wherever she was and learn the language and experience absolutely everything.
It was a r More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Catherine rated it:

Even though this book was written by Julia's grand-nephew, it stayed true to her voice throughout. This book focuses on her years living primarily overseas from 1948 until about the mid-1960s. The book focuses on her discovery of French cooking and finding her passion in life. There's also a lot about her relationship with her husband, Paul. I loved her enthusiasm, her genuine honesty, and her appreciation and respect for other cultures. Her humanity really touched me. The only negative th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 10, 2008

Betsy rated it:

This was a charming autobiography of the great Julia Child. I'm fascinated by this woman who moved to France in her late 30's unable to cooke and then blossomed into one of the United States' most revered chefs. The tone is warm and personable and accessible. My only complaint is that Child uses many phrases in French which make discerning some anecdotes challenging for the non-French speaker. Regardless, this book will leave you hungry for great French food...and possibly inspired to throw More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 04, 2010

Karen added it

Fascinating biography of Julia Child's love affair with food, and how she brought French cuisine to the consciousness of the average American. The book also provides great photos, many courtesy of her husband Paul, an avid, amateur photographer.[return][return]It all started with a really kickass Dover sole... the buerre blanc, the presentation, the freshness of the fish, the honest rusticness of the staff... it flicked a switch in Julia's mind that gave her one purpose in life: to figure out ho More...

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