Julie & Julia

I finished reading Julie & Julia over the weekend. What a fun read! It's a memoir about a neurotic, disgruntled twenty-nine-year-old New York secretary who decided to embark on the Julie/Julia Project -- a challenge to herself to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, and blog about her experience doing so. What followed was --obviously -- humor, broken eggs, an obscene amount of butter, and several nervous breakdowns.

I love Julie Powell’s writing style: witty, brutally honest, self-depreciating, sometimes whiny... yet always utterly relatable. (Especially the parts about her long-suffering husband.) Reading it, I was cheering her on and wondering whether she was completely nuts, often at the same time.

Julie's first post was Sunday, August 25, 2002 (that's right, I tracked it down), and it quickly gained an enthusiastic readership... among web surfers and eventually, the media. (Which is what eventually led her to her book deal, that lucky dog.)

I know there is a movie being made from the book, which will have a little bit more of Julia Child's life, based on her autobiography My Life in France. (I need to add that to my to-read list... or maybe my Christmas list.) And Meryl Streep is supposed to play Julia Child, so OBVIOUSLY that's going to be a fun performance.

That said, I don't think all of this is going to tear me away from my devotion to Alice Waters, but it gives me a new interest in and appreciation of Julia Child and schmancy French cooking. It also makes me yen for a project of my own, especially if it can eventually get me out of my sometimes-secretarial-like day job. Knitting? Baking? Jewelry-making? Any suggestion?