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Book Review of Julie and Julia : My Year of Cooking Dangerously

Julie and Julia : My Year of Cooking Dangerously
bpethtel avatar reviewed on
Helpful Score: 3


I was so disappointed in this book. I have not watched the movie, so I had no expectations for the book to live up to or vice versa. I didn't even realize it was a memoir until about 100 pages in, though it says it in teeny tiny letters on the front cover.

The book was very dry at parts, and extremely scatterbrained. It was as if Julie Powell took all of her blog posts, randomly mixed them up, and then put them in book form.

I did enjoy seeing her write about being a Buffy fan... at first. As a fellow Buffy fan, I got excited at seeing someone else fawn over one of my favorite shows... lame, I know. Many, many Buffy references later, I was tired of seeing her try to somehow shove the show into her book. She writes on and on (and on and on) about how she didn't see the last episode of the series. How does this pertain to Julia Child and French cuisine??

Truthfully, I could not finish this book. I trudged through nearly 300 pages, but finally I became so disgusted that I stopped reading. After several instances where Julie pokes fun at her inability to keep a clean house, she finally goes over the line for me. Julie discovers a mass of maggots in her kitchen. I lost my appetite for this book.