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Dec 16, 2009

devra rated it:

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 starte More...

13 comments like (102 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

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 ad More...

6 comments like (34 people liked it)

Sep 15, 2010

Katie rated it:

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 an More...

6 comments like (30 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

D rated it:

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...

11 comments like (15 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Firecooked rated it:

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, an More...

1 comment like (10 people liked it)

May 16, 2010

La Petite Américaine rated it:

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...

19 comments like (31 people liked it)

Apr 22, 2008

Jonathan rated it:

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 cri More...

11 comments like (38 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2007

Christine rated it:

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 t More...

3 comments like (16 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Petra X rated it:

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...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Sep 07, 2010

Julie rated it:

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 experi More...

2 comments like (9 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2007

Lena rated it:

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 certai More...

6 comments like (17 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Benjamin rated it:

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 th More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Stefani rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Jean rated it:

“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 nov More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 19, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (12 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Jessica rated it:

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 anecdo More...

2 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 24, 2008

Anneke rated it:

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.

2 comments like (19 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Julia rated it:

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...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 03, 2009

W.B. rated 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.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 10, 2009

April rated it:

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 hav More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Courtney rated it:

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. More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Scott rated it:

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!

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jul 24, 2009

Andrea rated it:

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 More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2009

David Jay rated it:

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 decide More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 24, 2009

Brandi Rae rated it:

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...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2009

Faith rated it:

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 w More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Aug 27, 2009

Allison rated it:

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 More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jun 01, 2008

Jen rated it:

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

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Sara ♥ rated it:

Finished this at about 1:30 AM. Not because it was enthralling or anything, but because I wanted to get it over with quickly so I could get on to the next book.

I'm a big fan of Food Network. What can I say? I like watching other people cook delicious-looking food I can't smell or eat. (Is this a form of masochism??) So I thought the cooking parts of this book were pretty interesting. The book is about a woman who cooks 524 Julia Child recipes in 365 days, so there's quite a bit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Jaspreet rated it:

I finished this book at the end of September and I am just now getting around to writing my review. (Tisk Tisk-- Shame on me) Anyway, I read this book for the first meeting of the book club I started. Based on the premise I thought that I would really like the book. I feel like I can relate very well to the desire to have a purpose to your days and feeling like your job is sucking the life out of you. However, I found Julie to be a bit off putting. She was crass and whiny. At times, I hated More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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