Julie & Julia Thoughts

A friend mentioned to me this week that since I read so much I should do short reviews on some of the books. So here goes: Julie & Julia

I finished reading Julie Powell's cooking challenge memoir back in February. In it she chronicles her attempt to cook through Julia Child's 524 from Mastering French Cooking. I made the mistake of watching the movie before reading the book. Normally that isn't an issue but in this case I preferred the movie and in turn found the book boring.

The book wasn't that it was dull, I just found it hard to read sections that I'd seen in the movie, particularly the lobster cooking crisis. I "knew" what happened so reading about the event seemed pointless. I say "knew" because there was an amount of details, thoughts, and even the time line (in places) that were that was different from the movie, which was only "based" on the book.

Another issue I had with reading Julie and Julia was the language and subject matter. She was raw and honest about life, which I appreciated but I didn't care for the cursing or continue connection to cooking and sex. It set a slightly darker tone that the lightness I imagined from the movie.

For those two reasons I would recommend just watching the movie. Plus I really like Amy Adams. The whole book wasn't a complete lost. Somewhere around the three-quarters mark I actually really started to enjoy the writing style. I enjoyed learning more about the details of the Powell life, their friends, and family. I also found that questions, more small details I was curious about from the movie were explained in the book. I appreciated a fuller resolution of Julia Child's dislike for Julie Powell and the epilogue. It was also my first Jess Point (see yesterdays blog post). Powell is explaining the process of gathering marrow for a cow bone on page 75:

“So there I was, scooping out the center of the center of things thinking mostly that it was some nasty sh---. Pink, as I think I’ve mentioned. Very wet. Not liquid, but not really solid, either –gluey clots of stuff that plopped down onto the cutting board with a sickening sound.

The boys looked on, mesmerized. “Someday,” Eric said, swallowing hard, “our sip is going to come in. We are going to move out of New York, and we are going to have our house in the country, like we’ve always wanted.”

I thought he was just trying to talk me into my happy place, but he had a point, and when he finished swallowing his bile, he made it.

“When this happens, we need to get ourselves a rescue cow. We will buy it from a slaughterhouse. And then we will treat it very well.”

It is the "rescue cow" that specifically made me smile and earned the Jess Point not the act of retrieving bone marrow. Powell goes on to say how even though she is a "fanatical eater of flesh" bone marrow was like a moral violation about life and animals that no one had the right to see. Either here or in the section about lobsters she made a point about seeing your meat alive change your appreciation for their life and the meal, or that is at least my interpretation of what I read.