This is not exactly how I would have liked to spend 3 weeks in PR, but G-d has different plans.
Briefly: my Mom was hospitalized, had surgery to deal with 2 hernias, and was readmitted with some pulmonary complications. She’s doing better now, thank G-d. I’ll be her till March 3.
My internet connection is spotty (thank heavens for Starbucks’ invasion of the island) so don’t expect too much during this time.
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell
rating: 4 of 5 stars
A slightly neurotic, obscenity-happy, professionally-unfulfilled, gimlet-guzzling Texas-born 29-year-old woman decides that to give greater meaning to her rapidly-spiraling-out-of-control life, if at least for a year, she is going to cook her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog about it in what she dubs the Julie/Julia Project. The premise alone had me hooked from page one.
The book is a memoir of the year in which Julie Powell cooked 524 recipes in 365 days, and though it incorporates anecdotes about writing on her blog, and excerpts from it, it is not a transcription of the blog (still available online, actually). We get to go behind the scenes of the blog, so to speak, and get to know Julie and her life, including husband Eric, and her quirky friends. We get to hear stories of the process of cooking, of the tantrums and catharsis provided by making roues and reductions and Bitch Rice (read it to find out). Of the insane amounts of butter used in French recipes. But most of all, of the sheer joy of Cooking, of putting together these disparate ingredients into dishes that convey emotions and make us gather in unison around the table, even if for cold chicken or eggs en gelee.
Julie is an entertaining host through this journey, even if at times she grates on the nerves a bit (though I never found her unlikeable). In many ways she reminds me of a real-life Bridget Jones, a compliment in my book. Modern food bloggers (frankly, I think any blogger) will get a kick out of reading this book both for the view at blogging in the “olden days” of 2002, and for the smiles you’ll get as you recognize yourself in the various meta-blogging anecdotes scattered throughout.
If after you’re done you want to get the parallel story, go ahead and pick up Julia Child’s My Life in France as I am currently doing and wait for the Julie & Julia movie coming in August 2009.
View all my reviews at Goodreads.com.
Friend and HMP Freelance Author Lonnie Ezell (Daughter of the Sun, Liber Sodalitas: The Dream Healers) has been busy this year with various personal projects.
LonnieEzell.com: Updates, New Fiction and a New Course!
Lonnie’s working on developing a new iPhone application (the nature of it is still hush-hush), has launched a new look for his website, and made his Fantasy Thriller novel, Daughter of the Sun, available for the Kindle
Two items in particular, however, have us really excited:
Lonnie is soon to begin publishing more fiction set in the thrilling world of Daughter of the Sun. First off is “Raising the Sun,” a short story set a millennium before the events of DotS and which will be serialized on Lonnie’s website and Facebook Fan Page; and news of continuing work on Heir of Fire, book two in the Sundered Breath trilogy.
The second item is the launch of Zero2Novel.com, Lonnie’s online course on novel writing.
The course pulls together all of the tips and techniques from my years of studying the craft of writing, along with some brand new ideas that I’ve just found on the best ways to use the mind to help you out.
Lonnie has been working on this course for a couple of years now and we are excited to see it finally done and released. If you are an aspiring novel writer, drop by Zero2Novel.com and check it out.
We wish Lonnie all the best, and we’ll continue to update everyone on further news.
Recent Comments