Read By: Julie Powell
So I'm a little late to this party. The Julie & Julia blog had a huge following (one of the first blogs to reach mainstream attention), the book came out in 2005 (a NY Times best seller, hello!) and the movie came out in 2009 (was that Meryl Streep?) that I never saw. So, yes, three years later I'm scanning the options at my local library and picked it up.
It's so not what I expected.
I was expecting Julie to be mousey and quiet -- a quintessential secretary with a passing interest in cooking. In reality, she swears like sailor and drinks like a fish (another gimlet, please). She's depressed, is crazy/dramatic and is a Buffy fangirl. One night, over wine, she jokes about cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her husband takes her seriously. He shows her this new thing called blogging and, much to her surprise, she follows through with it. Managing a year of butter, pork fat, testing the bonds of her marriage and all her other relationships.
I enjoyed that it was Julie's voice narrating the words. It made the memoir more personal. I responded or scolded her. "Julie, don't eat that!" And I cheered when she de-boned a duck. And I was sad, very sad, at the end when (spoiler alert) THE Julia Childs doesn't appreciate all she's going through.
The story rambled, but the challenge of all those recipes and the effect the project on her life was compelling. And hearing a female's voice move flawlessly from pronouncing French foods to dropping dirty f-bombs was entertaining.
Grade: Greenlight
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