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Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
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Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Unavailable
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

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

Written by Julie Powell

Narrated by Julie Powell

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 28, 2005
ISBN9781594832512
Unavailable
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen

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Rating: 3.5120847186304127 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

1,986 ratings171 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A young woman decides to spend one year of her life cooking all the recipes in volume one of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child and others. She also decides to blog about it when blogging was somewhat new.By all rights, I should have been head over heels in love with this book. I was not; although I did like it better towards the end than the beginning. I enjoyed the movie very much, but let me see if I can explain why this book didn't do it for me. It went beyond the foul language and raunchy (at times) voice of the author. I think it is because I am oh so tired of clever young women with potty mouths going on and on about themselves as if every decision they make is something the world wants to know about, and running down everyone around them. There is that, but I stuck with this story to see if the young woman grew up a bit in the story. I think she did. I have to wonder if she is actually as dysfunctional as she portrays herself, or is simply making use of a few episodes for the story. I can understand why Julia Child did not take her seriously. The way Powell writes about it, is seems that she doesn't bother to think or plan ahead when cooking, never cleans up after herself and doesn't give a hoot about how the food turns out as long as she has a gimlet to hand. I'm pretty sure that was mostly for comedic effect. That being said, even I would not want to eat in the house she describes, and my housekeeping standards are known for being very relaxed.Here's why I stuck with it. She had the determination and talent to at least try every recipe. If you have ever read MtAoFC, you will understand what an accomplishment that is in and of itself. These are foods we just don't see anymore in this day and age of putting a meal on the table in 5 minutes. I have tried cooking through a cookbook, attempting every recipe. It is not a feat to be taken on lightly. While the author makes light of her skills and other attributes, I think the strength of character is there underneath. That is why I stuck with the book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Actually found it quite banal. I like books about food; I love Julia Child and grew up literally down the street from her in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but I found the book's protagonist much less interesting and learned nothing at all about food or cooking I hadn't already learned from Julia herself. I read it on a cruise ship while being distracted; good place to read it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very funny!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Let me start by saying that when a book involves cooking or recipes, it actually includes 2 of my top five favorite things.....cooking and collecting recipes. And since I have read several books with a cooking theme that I have thoroughly enjoyed, when this book hit the shelves I knew that it had to be on my reading list.
    To be honest, I wasn't bowled over by this story. But, I have to also say that I think the idea of blogging your way through a cookbook is a marvelous one - one that I only wish I had the courage to try; so I have to give huge props to Julie Powell for starting the whole blog craze of doing that. I have read a lot of cooking blogs as well, and I feel that I would have actually enjoyed this story in it's original blog form more than the book. I ended up renting the movie a couple weeks later, and I really liked it. This shocked me actually, as I normally feel that most movie versions are a waste of time. While I don't feel that this book made my top 25, I didn't dislike it at all...it just wasn't one of my favorites.
    But, for those people, like me, who enjoy all things cooking, I think this will still prove to be an enjoyable read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I tired of the pace of Julie's unhappiness with her own life perhaps I'll try again or for this one, just see the movie
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Read this for book club. It was entertaining, but I'm more excited about the movie. I'm not into cooking so I tended to skim descriptions of meals, but definitely some funny stuff that happens to her while making the meals. Wish there were more about Julia Child's life, or at least it made me want to know more.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    For audiobooks from now on I'm going to try and select that version because that is part of my rating, the audio quality, reader, production, all that jazz.
    So I dinged this, not terribly so, for being abridged (my fault for not checking) yet for some reason full of unnecessarily long musical interludes. Not the standard ones that let you know to change the disc, oh no, these came at the end of sections, which I could only take to mean they were the end of chapters. Also the "added" conversation with the author was slightly unnecessary as it didn't go over any ground that hadn't just been read to me.
    That said, Powell does a great job of recreating her project and not just rehashing her blog from her Julie/Julia project. She also does a great job reading. And kudos on the excellent French pronunciations. I might pick up the print one day, to see what I missed.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    hmmm - the idea was good, but I really was not impressed by the ditzy character who was telling the tale...
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book is the product of a year of Julie Powell's sweat, tears, and blog entries. I'm sure she learned how to type MtAoFC (Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking) very quickly by the end of it. I liked this book really quite a lot - I am a fan of cooking, food, memoirs, food memoirs, and, most of all, Julia Child.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    One of the few stories where I preferred the movie to the book. I loved the story and the journey that Julie goes through, but I found the writing (and, at times, the author) annoying and just plain underwhelming.
    It's an OK read, especially for foodies, but there are better food books out there.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    It's not like I'm some sort of expert on the genre, but I am so sick of the memoirs of my generation. Honestly, we've all had bad jobs and bad moving experiences, and with a little patience and imagination, we could all craft those into humorous anecdotes. Reading a book about these things happening to some stranger, on the other hand, quickly becomes obnoxious.

    It's a shame, too, because Powell has a great premise. I wish she had she spent more time talking about the food and less time talking about her friends and her burgeoning celebrity. Instead, we're forced into learning trivia about a person without learning nearly as much about the only reason we might want to read about the person in the first place. The interspersed anecdotes from the life of Julia Child (real? imagined?), seem to be intended to draw parallels between her life and the author's, yet as far as I was concerned, it only made the differences more apparent.

    For Powell, completing all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking seems to be nothing more than a checklist. By the end, she's made everything in the book, but she doesn't seem to have learned anything (except valuable life lessons about herself, of course). She shows no apparent interest in actually mastering the art of French cooking (in a way, it reminds me of my own quest to read the major religious texts -- I read them all, but I learned nothing about religion -- but hey, I read them all!).

    I can't shake the feeling that the decision to recraft Powell's blog as a book was a huge mistake. As a blog, focused on the day-to-day, rather than big themes, I think the cooking would have taken center stage, while the life of the writer would have been little more than a seasoning. In a book, their positions are reversed.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    .Just thinking of the author, Julie Powell's journey into Julia Child's world leaves me exhausted, fascinated and in awe of her husband's tolerance and patience. I found myself laughing out loud at her misadventures in the kitchen, and even her constant use of the word f xxx. I scold anyone who uses the word, and yet Ms Powell's writing style pulled me in, realizing it was the only way she expressed her emotions. It added to, rather than taking from, the elements of good writing.Using her blogging experiences also added a fun dimension to her memoir, which is more like a confessional. She hates her day job, loves her offbeat friends and describes catastrophic attempts at French cooking as if she is sitting in my living room discussing the same. I was able to imagine Julia Child being a crude, honest and full of just-do-it courage as Julie was in her memoir, including the profanity laced throughout. Eric, the author's husband, reminded me of Paul, Ms. Child's husband, in his acceptance of the hilarious attempt of the wife learning the art of French cooking. Neither could cook, and yet, over time, both became media darlings from their culinary talents. As I cook for my husband I'll smile as I remember so many parts of this book, making the monotonous daily meal a more meaningful and at times an amusing adventure. I highly recommend this book, and if you think seeing the movie was enough you might rethink that idea.This book delivers so much more and is an excellent gift for any one who loves cooking or blogging.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    My wife and I saw the movie a while back. I've always been a huge fan of Julia Child, and the thought of making more than 500 recipes in her "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" is the sort of crazy goal I can identify with. In this case, blogger Julie Powell takes on the challenge, with the goal of completing it over the course of a year.While I don't recall all of the particulars of the movie (which I liked), the book seems to be a bit raunchier. For some reason, I get a kick out of women who use a lot of profanity, especially since I don't use all that much myself (and almost none in my writing). The book makes Julie seem more of a real person than the movie version could have done.For those who haven't seen the movie, Julie struggles to balance her married life, a temp job as a secretary working for the government, and increasing media notoriety as she pursues this crazy goal. She comes into this without a great deal of knowledge or skill in cooking, Julia's book is her mentor at the same time. Her blog followers offer the most encouragement, although she would struggle to maintain timely updates. If she had done this project today, she would probably be Tweeting while boiling the cow's hooves as she makes aspic.Ever since I saw the movie, I've been thinking about a similar food-related project some day. As soon as I'm sure I can spend a year to make it so, I'll let the world in on it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I laughed (and belly laughed at times) my way through this book. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the mis-steps of Julia Child's recipes by Julie. And the amazing successes also. I do not think that I could eat a fraction of these recipes. There is a lot of internal organs being cooked in this book. And I often wondered how Julie afforded all of the components of these recipes what with having to make some of them two and three times.The story is of Julie taking one year of her life and cooking every single recipe of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It was an amazing undertaking. She and her husband Eric, had many friends to come to dinner and help eat the concoctions. Most of them were enjoyed with only a few being yucked.I liked the book a great deal and enjoyed all of the characters. Julie's husband is a saint. I highly recommend this read for the simple enjoyment of it and I rated it 4 out of 5 stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This has been an outstanding book that has brought me great laughs and excitement for hours upon hours. But because of juggling many books at the same time I have decided to drop a book hopefully to come back and finish this. This is a journal about how Julie a young hipster girl living with her boyfriend in a dirty apartment over comes trying to cook and follow Julia Childs famous recipes in the book "Mastering the art of french cooking." During this whole time she keeps a blog where she gains many followers and daily readers. Her main goal for this blog is to finish this book in a year and cook every single recipe. During this time she encounters much trouble and experimenting with cooking. This is Julies first time really cooking besides heating up old take out in the microwave which provides much comedy and great plot twists making me just crave to want to open the book up again and again. Being a boy and reading this book gave me much doubt, but after working my way into it I have found this to be such an amazing book that I would recommend anyone to read, liking to cook or not.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love it when Americans can be imperfect! Julie Powell is a wonderfully, defective human being who tells it as it is, with I might add, very colourful language. I know little about French cooking (other than I like it) and even less about Julie Childs, but this book works simply because of Powell's honesty. Her determination and stubbornness are highly entertaining, as are her various orbiting characters; husband Eric, mother, brother and girlfriends. I won't waffle on about Julie & Julia, the book is already history and the movie as long since come and gone, so if you're not aware of the story you're never going to be. But if you love the whole blogisphere concept and are looking for some first class entertainment, get a hold of the audiobook, plug in your earbuds and settle back for some truly hilarious listening. You won't regret it!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed the Julia Childs part of the book, as with the movie. Motivated me to look into her life. Writing was the usual witty blogger type, but well done. Enjoyable romp. Also made me hungry for potato soup.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Who doesn't know what this book is? It's a memoir of a young woman who decided to find herself by cooking every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (that's over five hundred recipes!) in just one year. Her story was made into a major motion picture starring two of the greatest actresses of our time - Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. You'd have to live under a rock to have not heard of this by now. Quite frankly, after watching and loving the film, I'd been wanting to read the book for quite some time.It was great to go through the memoir and consider along with Julie each thing she was cooking. She'd never eaten an egg before this experiment, which gets you wondering, how does that even happen? And to be honest, I couldn't identify with Julie's disgust with bone marrow. Have you ever eaten marrow? In my family we practically fight over the bone in the ham steak so we can suck out the marrow. It's creamy and delicious! I don't see why the marrow from a cow would be that much different from that of a pig. Anyway, I was happy to read that Julie enjoyed the marrow when it finally came down to eating it.One of the more interesting themes for me was the relation between food and sex. As a pre-teen Julie got a thrill by secretly sneaking peaks of her parent's copy of The Joy of Sex and later found flipping through her mother's copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking gave her the same thrill. When Julie and Eric started dating she used food to keep him around and to get in his pants, just as Julia used cooking to help establish a relationship with her husband, Paul. Not just in the memoir, but I think frequently in life, there is this connection between food and sex. It's hard to explain, but it makes sense - they're both delicious, delectable things to indulge in. They kind of go hand in hand somehow.Watching the movie makes me want to get up and cook something spectacular. Maybe not aspic because, let's face it, that's kind of gross. But maybe something good like Boeuf Bourguignon. At the very least it makes me think I'll bone a duck before I die, though maybe not anytime soon. The book did not inspire me the way the movie did, but it was still a fantastic read. Julie has a gift for quirky writing and the memoir made me giggle at the right points. Props to her for blogging and then making a career out of it. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who likes to cook.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A fun, quirky memoir that coincides with some biographical story telling about Julia Child. A cute, easy, and funny read for anyone who loves a good memoir, blogs, cooking, female writers, stories about relationships, coinciding lives, a good chuckle, or any combination of the above. The story makes you want to embark on your own project of self discovery,,, or at least take a cooking class sometime.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This particular memoir found its way onto my reading list because I stumbled upon the movie one Saturday afternoon, quite by accident. I was sucked in by Meryl Streep, really. (She did an amazing Julia Child.) But be warned, the movie is not the book. And this time I don't mean that in a "the book is always better than the movie" sort of way.Julie Powell is having a mid-life crisis at the ripe old age of 29. She has a steady job that she mildly hates and a loving husband whom she also mildly hates (if the verbal and mental abuse she heaps on him are any indication of that sort of thing). She decides that the only way to overcome her angst is to cook her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year and to share her misadventures in a blog. She started this blog when blogs were the IT thing and, subsequently, got a book deal for her trouble. There are two important things to keep in mind if you decide to read this memoir. First of all, despite what the title may indicate this book contains a lot about Julie and not enough about Julia. And, secondly, the Julie Powell of real life is not the Julie Powell of the movie. This should go without saying but somehow caught me unaware all the same. The movie Julie is cutely neurotic. The real Julie cusses like a sailor and is perpetually on the edge of a meltdown. She also manages to insult at least everyone, from Republicans to Vegetarians, at least once. It was very amusing for the first couple of chapters; I'll even admit to chuckling a time or two. She's funny. But a whole 300 some pages of her histrionics was more than I could bear. Perhaps I'm just not cut out to be a reader of memoirs?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The best thing about this book was that it got me more interested in the life of Julia Child and jher book "My Life in France". I was amused by Julie Powell's attempts to cook every recipe from Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Vol.1) but I found her musings too self-possessed and superficial for my taste. Still I learned that I never want to try to cook anything out of this cookbook, and I do admire her persistence in sticking with the project. It's a good read for a book group wanting a break from heavier fair and for those interested in the lives of self-absorbed New Yorkers.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Well I just finished reading Julie and Julia, the book about the blogger that decided to cook all the recipes in Master the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. I don't even know where to begin with this review. I didn't love the book that is one thing. I didn't really hate the book either. I just know that I will never try to Master the Art of French Cooking. I like to cook but I wouldn't want to torture myself or anyone that I am cooking for either.I had decided to read Julie and Julia since I had seen parts of the movie already. I enjoyed most of the movie that I have seen. I hope to watch the movie from beginning to end at some point then I can give a better review of the movie.There are a few things that I didn't care for in the book and that was the ramblings of Julie. The book just felt like she did a lot of rambling and whining. She would complain about her real job, her decision to do this project, her friends, her biological clock ticking away, her mother, etc. You name it she complained about it. It was funny at first but after awhile it became annoying and I noticed that I would skim over those parts. Julie also had a very foul mouth during this project, whether this is a reflection of how she really handles stress or her actual personality I really can't say. I just know that saying the 'f' word as often as she did just doesn't make me think of her as a lady or female.I would love to hear from some of her followers from the blog. It would be interesting to really just see what they found so fascinating about her project let alone how they actually found the blog and decided to stick with her through the whole project.I can not tell you to read or not to read this book. You have to decide for yourself because it is not something I feel everyone will enjoy reading. I am not one that will only read so many pages before I decide to stop reading. I will read a book to the end so that I can give it a full review. I may soon decide to start saying that if I am not enjoying the book from either 50 to 100 pages in then I should stop reading the book.If you love to cook you may enjoy reading this book. If you have Master the Art of French Cooking you may be able to enjoy the book even more since you will undoubtedly be familiar with all if not most of the recipes Julie attempts. I have to give this book about 2 stars. Just not my cup of tea...
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A couple years ago, a friend said to me, Teri, you HAVE to read this book. I looked at it, and figured, meh, not that into french cooking, I'll pass. For some reason, I picked this up recently (I think I bought it for a dollar at Half Price Books) and decided to try it. Long story short, I loved it. When Julie is at loose ends and can't figure out who she is and who she wants to be, she gives herself a mission. Cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking is no easy feat, but neither is finding yourself. I love Julie Powell, she is foul mouthed and short tempered. She is not some delicate flower, cooking in an apron. She is open minded and I am totally envious of her relationship with her husband. An excellent book, an excellent read, an excellent journey!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found the first 50-100 pages of this pretty hard going and not very interesting, and then surprised myself by getting hooked. So I'd say people should give this book a chance. I was fairly comfortable with the swearing and informal, personality-filled style of the author. I don't have a problem with that. Autobiographical work should reflect one's personality, and surely people need not conform to others' expectations. Fun, feisty, inspirational.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really wanted to like this book more than I did. For me, this is one of those instances where I enjoyed the film more than the book, but that's mainly because I enjoyed the combined story of Julia Childs an Julie Powell rather than just Julie's story on it's own. The reason? Julia Childs is far more interesting.This isn't to say that I didn't relate to Julie at all. I understood the joy she got out of doing the Project and related to her political leanings and love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (though as a native New Yorker I took offense to her rude remarks of the people of my home town - why was she living there if she hated it so much?). However, I really didn't care all that much about what was going on in her friends' lives. That isn't why I chose to read the book. I was more interested in the cooking and the experience of the cooking. Okay, maybe the lives of her friends were intertwined to her own experiences, but the amount of details she went into about her friends kind of felt like filler, when I really wanted to hear more about her cooking experiences.This was a fairly enjoyable, easy read, but I would like to now read Julia Childs's account of her life in France as I have the feeling that would be far more entertaining.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The jury's out. I can't decide if I like this book or not. It wasn't what I expected it to be: I thought it was going to be sort of a sweet story of a modern girl discovering something of the refinement and civility of the past... via cooking like Julia Child. No. It was a story about this awful fake New Yorker (i.e. somebody who moved to New York about two years ago and therefore considers themselves a native) who swears a lot, is awful to her husband, and vaguely intersperses a handful of made-up scenes from Julia Child's life. Oh, well, she does talk occasionally about the recipes she cooked (which was what I was really interested in), although that was apparently far more detailed in her blog.Did the book need to be incredibly hateful and bigoted *specifically* towards Republicans? No. Did it need to be a place for her to ramble about how she doesn't give a hoot for the sanctity of marriage? No. Did she NEED to advise her friend to sleep with a married man? No. Does she NEED to swear like a sailor? No. (And I'm evidently not the only person who thinks she doesn't need to, and she makes a point of mocking those people.)I kept reading because in many ways I identified her -- and because I was hoping that after wading through all of that, it would at least have a good ending. Well. It sort of did. But not worth wading through all of that. In the end I just wound up feeling like she was kind of an awful person, trying to stuff food into a hole in her heart. Oh well; at least she got a movie deal out of the thing.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The story was ok. It's an interesting idea and interesting to read Julie's thoughts and revelations through each recipe. I actually liked Julia Child in the movie better. Her story was more developed than it was in the book and it was easier to see the connections.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well, the title of the book pretty much tells you what this one is about. There has been so much talk about this book and the movie that was made, I saw the movie and really enjoyed it so I tracked down a copy of the book and was a bit disappointed. This is still a great concept to me, with the popular Julia Childs recipes and even the addition of some of her personal letters, but I was a bit shocked that Julie was portrayed differently in the movie than the book. Can't really put my finger on the reason, but she was different.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I do believe that my husband enjoyed the movie more than I enjoyed the book. He was laughing out loud on the airplane, not noticing the glances of his fellow passengers as he did so. I struggled through this one, only finishing it out of sheer hope that the story will start capturing me towards the end. And yeah, some stubbornness. Have yet to see the movie.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book because Julie is a ordinary person who takes this strange journey through Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. The book itself is a daunting 40 year old cookbook that most of us would never have looked at twice. Julie cooks her way through this book in a year. In the course of it learning some really wonderful life lessons. I was inspired reading this book and I totally fell in love with Julie and Eric and friends. This is a must read in my mind.