Julie & Julia

By Julie Powell (Penguin, RRP $28)

 

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Julie Powell  wasn't happy with her life. Living in a pokey New York apartment and simply getting on with the daily grind, the author felt like life was passing her by.

Now, it's probably safe to say many of us have felt like this at some stage in our lives.

However, Powell's solution was certainly one out of the box: she decided to grab the bull by the horns (or the whisk by the handle) and cook her way through every one of the recipes in Julia Child's legendary cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

What started out as a way to get herself out of a bit of a rut became something of an obsession, with her efforts to cook all 542 of the recipes in the space of a year.

Powell wrote about her efforts on her blog and her story captured hearts and minds online and in real life.

The resulting story has been pulled together in a book and a movie that mixes two books: Julia Child's autobiography and Julie Powell's memoir.

This book is a lovely wee bit of feel-good writing that will keep you entertained without too much effort. I read the original blog on occasions during Powell's "year of cooking dangerously" and found the book a bit easier to digest.

- © Fairfax NZ News