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| Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously | 
 enlarge | Author: Julie Powell
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Category: Book
List Price: $13.99
Buy Used: $1.93
You Save: $12.06 (86%)
New (61) Used (85) Collectible (1) from $1.93
Avg. Customer Rating:  63 reviews
Sales Rank: 20155
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0316013269
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5092
EAN: 9780316013260
ASIN: 0316013269
Publication Date: September 7, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Standard used condition.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Something's Burning in the Kitchen August 6, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I love stories like this. Someone comes up with a harebrained, or possibly a brilliant, idea, such as reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica (Know-It-All), watching a movie in a different theater every day for a year (A Year at the Movies), or eating nothing but fast food for one month (Super Size Me). What kind of obsessed people are these? Maybe I wouldn't take on these crazy projects myself, but I can't resist their stories.
Julie Powell doesn't seem obsessive at all, a little prone to mood swings perhaps, and depressed that her job as a temp secretary in Manhattan is so-o-o-o boring and that she is approaching age thirty before she is quite ready for it. Her husband Eric, whose even temper is the perfect counterpoint to Julie's emotional peaks and valleys, suggests that she a) go to cooking school, and b) visit her family in Austin. Julie sensibly takes his advice to get away for a while and rediscovers her mother's forty-year-old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Why spend money for cooking school when Julia Child has already developed a course in her classic cookbook? An idea begins to form. . .
Eric, not only supportive, but also full of good ideas, further suggests that Julie keep a blog of her project, an original idea in 2002. The project has rules now: all the recipes must be completed within one year and she has to post on her blog every day.
When I heard about this book, I thought it would be a fun read about Julie's adventures and misadventures in French cooking. It turned out to be rather more than that. It would have been easy enough for Julie to just flesh out her blog a bit and turn it into a book. Instead, she weaves in partly true stories about her friends and family, partly true stories about Julia Child and her husband Paul, and snippets from Samuel Pepys's diaries. Since Julie's temp job is connected with the aftermath of September 11, that hangs in the background as well.
Wonderfully fun and inspiring July 22, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The pursuit of joy... that's what Julie Powell is ultimately after. Powell's recipe antics are amusing, but what sets this book apart is the focus on living one's life out loud, full speed ahead, and with all flags unfurled. A note on the language: I quite enjoyed her mouth and her style of writing, but then I too suffer from "sailor tongue." And if her politics upset you? Well, then, now you know how us liberals have felt for the last few years while reading the newspaper... seriously, if Julie can learn to accept the different lifestyles of her friends (my favorite anecdote concerns Julie's responses to her friend Isabel's life), then surely we can all agree to disagree, can't we?
 Lots of fun! May 11, 2007
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I have a hard time understanding the critics of this book. First off, Powell never held this out as a cookbook or cooking manual of any kind. Second, the accusation that she is insensitive to 9/11 victims' families is flatly untrue. She is very insensitive (and really, who wouldn't be?) to members of the public who submitted weird, tacky, or otherwise laughable ideas for the 9/11 memorial (a football stadium??), but she shows nothing but respect for the victims' loved ones when she describes assisting them in the "Family Room" overlooking Ground Zero.
As for the swearing, get over it. You'd swear, too, if you had to ride the subway at rush hour, in summer, to an overpriced, filthy, Outer Borough apartment, with a lobster on your lap.
Sure, this isn't great literature, but it's a fun read.
I really enjoyed Julie & Julia. March 31, 2007
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
A friend of mine lent me Julie & Julia at a point when I needed something to cheer me up. I have to admit that few things make me more suspicious than a book that derived from a blog. I also have a pretty low tolerance for chick lit in general, and this smelled like chick lit to me.
But anyhow. Despite going into the book with poor expectations, I was pleasantly surprised. I found it well-written and it felt honest. It had several laugh-out-loud moments. Best of all, I found myself genuinely liking the narrator/author. It was good fun. And that was exactly what I wanted it to be.
Although you can get some foodie kicks from Julie & Julia, it is not really about food. Do not read the book if you are looking for technical details, deep reflection about Julia Childs and French cooking, or kitchen tips and tricks. It is not that kind of book. Think light read with cooking as a kind of character quest.
One quarrel-- in her author's note Powell declares that "sometimes she just makes stuff up". That made me less comfortable with the book, honestly. As a memoir it has a lot of charm. As a novel, it has much less interest. I am not sure why that should be the case, but it took a little bit of the shine off for me to see that note at the beginning.
Anyhow. If, like me, you are looking for some cheering up then this could be a book for you. Bonus points if you find yourself an urbanite with a foodie-wannabee cooking habit, because then the funny parts are going to be even funnier. I had to wince when remembering some of my own attempts at homemade mayonnaise. Recommended.
Good humor, good eatin'! March 30, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Julie Powell loves Julia Child. Wanting to give something more to her life, she gives herself one year to cook her way through all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, or MtAoFC, as Julie calls it. Julie gains more and more online and then real life popularity as she continues her plight making gross-sounding gelatin entrees, boiling live lobsters, and getting the pink slimy marrow out of bones. The cooking scenes are bound to make a reader a little squeamish, but make you respect Julie and her husband Sam, who helps out, all the more. Julie's running narrative is full of emphatic cursing (which is disliked by some of her blog readers but I enjoyed), and I like her self-deprecating sense of humor. The book has about six false endings, which is kind of annoying, but helped to wrap up The Project (as Julie calls it) a little better. Julie also lives in New York the year after 9/11, and works as a temp for the people responsible for taking ideas for a monument for the tragedy, and handles this with grace and as always, her unique perspective.
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