Julie and Julia : : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen : how one Girl Risked her Marriage, her Job, and her Sanity to Master the art of Living

Locations
Call Number: 641.509 Po, Adult Book / Nonfiction / Cooking / Essays & Narratives / Powell, Julie
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Pittsfield Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	641.509 Po	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Cooking / Essays & Narratives / Powell, Julie	4-week checkout	On Shelf

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Julia. Definitely. submitted by Sara W on June 20, 2011, 11:23pm I can appreciate that Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking came along at just the the right time in Julie Powell's life and I can appreciate the difficulty of rounding up Julia's ingredients, like canned onions and marrow bones and I can appreciate the frustration of working in a depressing, post-September 11th setting.

But I could not appreciate the casual mentions of sticky, filthy, cat-hair covered counters and reeking body odor. Julie grossed me out! I fully admit that I don't have the stomach to eat nearly anything in Julia's cookbook, or even to touch raw meat, a chore I have successfully avoided all my life... but this woman's kitchen had maggots growing in it!

How do you not notice maggots developing in your kitchen? The kitchen in which you have hosted camera crews and food writers while making incredibly complex French dishes! How hard it is it to wipe down your counters? Especially in a kitchen where you are butchering lobster and deboning duck? You'd think you'd really want to stay on top of bacteria in a kitchen where you are marinating a leg of lamb for three days at room temperature. GROSS, Julie!

I found Julie's life anecdotes alienating, repulsive and depressing. They detracted from the point of the story, the reason she ever got a publishing deal and the sole reason any of her readers ever picked up her book in the first place.

So.... congratulations to Julie on turning her life around... on telling me about her friends weird and sad sexual dilemmas... for cooking her way through a cultural landmark cookbook.

But this book ultimately helped me to realize that I adore Julia Child and crave more stories from her life and that I don't think I'll be seeking out any more Julie Powell.

better a Blog submitted by erksnerks on July 22, 2011, 3:15pm I read her blog from the get go and then she got bought.
The blog in it's infancy was a great read. The book is not a blog hence out of context...

Eh submitted by smgop on July 17, 2013, 8:06pm Loved learning more about Julia - Julie's story left me cold.

Ok submitted by crazypockets on August 30, 2013, 9:38pm I wish this book would've had more parts about Julia Child like the movie did. It seemed like the movie was a lot more balanced whereas the book was almost all about Julie Powell. I get that it was her memoir, but it got a little old after awhile. She seemed to talk about the same basic theme over and over again: her constant psychological meltdowns. I think it's important to look at it in the context of the early days of blogging, but it's kind of amazing to think of how she got to be so hugely popular if every entry on her blog was like the book.

I did find it inspirational that she was able to change her life to what she wanted it to be in such a triumphant way. You don't often find stories of people in their 30s doing that, so it was a reassuring thing. I agree with the previous poster about how it seemed crazy how dirty her kitchen got after awhile. It's hard to understand living and working in such a small space and allowing so much potential for food-born illness to build up without even noticing.

I think people who cook would really appreciate this book a lot more than I did because she gets very technical with her recipe descriptions. I understand this is a book about cooking though. so that's understandable. Overall, this was ok, and I rarely say this, but I really did like the movie better.