Julie and Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (14)

Title: Julie and Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Author: Julie Powell
Genre: Non- Fiction, Memoir

Another re-read, sue me. This time I read it aloud to B though. We're really enjoying experiencing books together through me reading out loud to her. I know it must sound silly but it's really enjoyable and I'm so glad we're doing it. This was the third title we shared this way and we both enjoyed it equally even though I'd read it before. The review I wrote of it two years ago holds up surprisingly well and is still accurate.

Julie Powell was rapidly approaching 30, unhappy with her job, frustrated with where she was in her life and unsure where she was going. All of this sounds way too familiar to me to allow me to even consider not reading this book.

At that edge of 30 Powell decided to cook every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume I over the course of one year. It was a monumental undertaking to say the least and it changed her life in ways she never imagined. Through her year of MtAoFC she kept a blog updating her progress and pitfalls and all the normal blog fodder. I read her blog a couple times in 2003 while the project was underway but at the time it didn't mean much to me so I paid very little attention to it.

This time round though the book means very much. Again, blame it on my familiarity with the general subject matter (sometimes overwhelming ennui) but I came away from the book feeling optimistic. Not because Powell ended up with a book deal, writing gigs, and got to ditch her white collar worker bee job, but optimistic because she was a bit different at the end of her project, a bit happier, a bit better.

Powell's style is very blog-ish in the best possible way -friendly, familiar, conversational. Even at 300+ pages the book is a breeze to get through and the cooking success and tragedies are well blended with stories and anecdotes form other parts of the author's life. There are no photos and no recipes, it's not a cookbook, just a really good retelling of a time of serious change in one woman's life.