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

Product Details

The bestselling memoir that's "irresistible....A kind of Bridget Jones meets The French Chef" (Philadelphia Inquirer) is now a major motion picture. Audiobook read by the author and value-priced!


Directed by Nora Ephron, starring Amy Adams as Julie and Meryl Streep as Julia, the film Julie & Julia will be released by Sony Pictures on April 19, 2009.

The film is based on this bestselling memoir in which Julie Powell, nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, resolves to reclaim her life by cooking in the span of a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her unexpected reward: not just a newfound respect for calves' livers and aspic, but a new life-lived with gusto.





Julie & Julia is the story of Julie Powell's attempt to revitalize her marriage, restore her ambition, and save her soul by cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, in a period of 365 days. The result is a masterful medley of Bridget Jones' Diary meets Like Water for Chocolate, mixed with a healthy dose of original wit, warmth, and inspiration that sets this memoir apart from most tales of personal redemption.

When we first meet Julie, she's a frustrated temp-to-perm secretary who slaves away at a thankless job, only to return to an equally demoralizing apartment in the outer boroughs of Manhattan each evening. At the urging of Eric, her devoted and slightly geeky husband, she decides to start a blog that will chronicle what she dubs the "Julie/Julia Project." What follows is a year of butter-drenched meals that will both necessitate the wearing of an unbearably uncomfortable girdle on the hottest night of the year, as well as the realization that life is what you make of it and joy is not as impossible a quest as it may seem, even when it's -10 degrees out and your pipes are frozen.

Powell is a natural when it comes to connecting with her readers, which is probably why her blog generated so much buzz, both from readers and media alike. And while her self-deprecating sense of humor can sometimes dissolve into whininess, she never really loses her edge, or her sense of purpose. Even on day 365, she's working her way through Mayonnaise Collee and ending the evening "back exactly where we started--just Eric and me, three cats and Buffy...sitting on a couch in the outer boroughs, eating, with Julia chortling alongside us...."

Inspired and encouraging, Julie and Julia is a unique opportunity to join one woman's attempt to change her life, and have a laugh, or ten, along the way. --Gisele Toueg

Customer Reviews ::

Can't believe I wasted my money on this - Tanya Atkinson - Jacksonville, FL United States
The feeling of sheer relief at having just finished this book might actually make my review slightly more generous than if I had written it when I still had a few dozen pages to slog through. That being said, it was a Herculean effort to not toss this self-indulgent mess across the room 300+ pages ago and instead actually make it to the end.

First things first. Powell has to be the most narcissistic, neurotic, whiney, self-absorbed and ungrateful person I have encountered on paper. The scope of her self-absorption is something one encounters in a petulant teenager, but as 30 year old woman Powell seems to have retained that center-of-the-universe egoism, as well as the teenage angst. Her long-suffering husband Eric must be going for sainthood. Powell's dissatisfaction with all that is her life grows tiresome quickly. (I suppose reading about anyone else's identity crisis always is.) And her contempt for countless others knows no bounds. Republicans, Mid-Westerners, non-theater geeks, grieving families of 9/11 victims, co-workers, friends... and basically anyone she deems too uncool for her psudeo-hipster self. Lovely.

There seemed to be little continuity to the book. I had difficulty keeping track of time and Powell seemed to backtrack often. Add to this the constant filler of details and anecdotes about family and friends alike. While I was hoping for a real entry into Powell's day to day project, I could have done without the revelation of her father's extramarital affair, her friend's bizarre dream analysis, and another friend's sexual encounters with a married co-worker.

As a foodie, I picked up Julie & Julia hoping to be entertained by the magic of a meal well made. But that is not what Powell has shared. While I can admire the fact that she took on such a daunting project, I'm left wishing I had borrowed this one from the library and saved my eight bucks.