What Goodreads Has To Say: Some people go on pilgrimages; Julie Powell attempted to master one cookbook. Thirty years old, bored with her job, hating her Queens apartment, Powell decided to transcend her life by concocting all 524 recipes in Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking -- in a single year. Replicating Child's kitchen artistry at such short notice tested Julie's skill and stamina, not to mention her husband's patience; but it did produce a high-spirited, sometimes hilarious memoir.
What I Have To Say: I listened to this book in about (3) days back and forth to work and traveling through town for work. I think it's better that I was listening to it because had I been reading it I don't know if I would have gotten through it. I liked listening to it better than I think I would have liked reading it. She read her own writing, and I appreciated the inflections that she gave when reading. I love the concept - cooking your way through a cookbook, Julia Child's no less, in a year. I don't think I could do it. I think it's one of those "that sounds really cool" but I'm glad someone else did it, because I believe I would have given up halfway through. I have also seen the movie, and I think I will watch it again tonight. I don't know which I like better. I found (as often happens...) that the movie did not follow exactly as the book did. The movie, I found built up much more suspense, and if I remember the movie correctly, things were presented out of order in the movie than how it actually happened. When I put in disc (2) I remember having to take it back out and looking at it to make sure I was listening to the correct disc because I thought what I was listening to had happened much later in the movie.
Julie's interactions with Eric remind me a lot of what happens in my house with my hubby. Though, in fairness, he does most of the cooking. I like the idea of cooking ... I don't so much like the chore and having to do it. I get the Food Network cooking magazine every month, and everything in it looks amazing. But my husband works 3rd shift and I have such issues thinking that I'm going to cook something and he won't even enjoy it when it was first hot, and he'll have to heat it up again. It's like it takes some of the magic out of it. Plus, I get home around 5:30 ... and cooking is the last thing I generally want to do. (Working out is probably below cooking, so if someone asked which I'd rather, I may choose cooking...) Part of my problem is that I never "feel" like going to the store and so if I got up the energy to cook, I'd also have to find the energy to also go shopping. If there is any chore that I hate more than any other, it's grocery shopping. My husband is amazing and he does most of the grocery shopping for us.
And if I were cooking and I didn't get done until 11 pm or later, there was absolutely no way that I would have kept this up as long as she did. Her "bleeders," as she calls them, helped push her through. I guess it would be cool to have people that responded that well to a blog. I don't think that will ever happen to me. I don't know how she managed to get so many followers back in 2002, when blogging was such a new concept, but more power to her.
She also made me want to go and visit the Smithsonian just to visit the Julia Child exhibit. (Also, to see if the butter that she left as a tribute is still there....)
Rating: 3.5 stars
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