Review: Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

Approaching 30 and stuck in a dead-end job Julie Powell decides to reclaim her life by cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. In the end she finds something she didn't expect - joy and her way in the world.

When trailers for Julie & Julia the movie started to show up on TV I decided I wanted to see it. Meryl Streep is one of the best actresses out there and Amy Adams is just adorable so I figured I'd enjoy the story and them in it. Then a friend of mine told me she bought the book the movie is based on and offered to let me borrow it when she was done with it. Of course I couldn't pass that up and when it was my turn to read about Julie Powell's adventures I dove right in.
Julie's writing style is very conversational and that made it an easy and quick read. It was fun to read about a modern American woman cook things that usually don't even register on the radar of dinner possibilities and it was no less fun to see her navigate the changing landscape of her life when she became a local and later a national celebrity. So I just kept turning the pages well into the night.
Julie herself struck me as a spunky young woman, albeit a bit unhappy about her stagnant life and quite unpardonably whiny and selfish on a number of occasions. Sometimes I though to myself "Really, woman?!" but I loved the humor with which she described both her successes and her failures, and the part where she talked about the comments on her blog resonated with me, as I think it did with most if not all bloggers who read the book - it is extremely exciting to get comments from people you don't already know. I loved how her husband and friends supported her through the highs and lows of this sometimes stressful endeavor and merrily consumed the fruits of her labors. It was also a lot of fun to see how Julia Child inspired Julie to continue with the project and Julie's tribute to Julia at the end of the year made me laugh out loud. It was just too perfect.
I very much enjoyed the book in its entirety but my very favorite part of it was this quote: "Julia taught me what it takes to find your way in the world. It's not what I thought it was. I thought it was all about — I don't know, confidence or will or luck. Those are all some good things to have, no question. But there's something else, something that these things grow out of. It's joy." This book was pretty much a fun romp and had it not been for this little paragraph I wouldn't have given it another serious thought but after I read it Julie's story gained a little more heft and made me look back at it and life in general from a different angle. It made me want to go and do things "just because" because we all need more joy in our lives, don't we? Can't hurt, that's for sure.

Review: Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Bridget is a 30+ singleton living in London, employed in a dead-end job, drooling over her boss and unable to loose weight despite counting calories of every morsel she eats. The analyzes every move and every breath of her prospective love interests and dissects them over drinks with her three faithful friends. Will she see that Mr. Darcy, top notch barrister, is the man for her despite being too busy dwelling on his hideous Christmas sweater? To find out we'll have to read her diary.

This is an incredibly funny book, unabashedly chick-lit and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to relax, unwind and develop some laugh lines. One can't help but sympathize with and root for Bridget, who is so self-analytical that she can't see past her doubts and the pile of self-help books and is adorable despite all her little quirks. She's a total klutz and it's amazing how she's managing to live on her own and keep a job and if she succeeds it is inevitably by stumbling into it rather than working for it. Now if only she would remember that Mr. Darcy isn't a subject of one of her men-are-from-mars books but a real man, who actually loves her, just the way she is!

Review: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

Eloise is a history student from Harvard spending a year in England doing research on English spies in France in the 19th century. She has a quest - to find information on the mysterious Pink Carnation, whose true identity was never revealed. Her last desperate effort to find something, anything, produces surprising and fascinating results as well as may be a possibility of a romance.

If you are anything like me you'll enjoy this book. Ms. Willig blends historical romance and chick lit to create a page-turner of a story with fun characters and a mystery. I laughed out loud too many times to count and while the leads were an absolute delight the secondary characters kept stealing the spotlight. I did have trouble getting into the story but the pace picked up in the second third so I'm not complaining too much. Another thing that didn't always work for me is the language - it didn't really fit the Napoleonic era. I kept being distracted by modern turns of phrase and American spelling although the characters were all English.
All in all this is a delightful read that did a wonderful job of distracting me from the tedium of the never-ending dishes-laundry-work rotation and put me in a good mood. I look forward to reading the next volume in the series!

Review: The Next Thing On My List by Jill Smolinski

This is exactly the kind of book I enjoy - light, funny, real and with some deep-running undercurrents.
The realness of it all was probably the best part. So often in fiction everything happens just like the protagonist plans it, a couple of snags along the way but in the end all dreams come true. Here things do work out, but not quite how June thought she wanted them to, which in itself is so real. She wants to date the hot guy who appears to want to date her, but... as soon as she tells him about her plans to adopt a baby fire turns to ice and he's not so eager any more. A teenager pregnant after a one-night stand, a child preparing to have a child; she is so grown up in planning to quit her regular classes and thinking about the realities of having to take care of a baby but at the same time she gets thrilled at the prospect of make-up and new clothes. A thirty-something woman seething in her cubicle when she gets passed over for the promotion she was waiting for. A middle-aged woman hiding the pain of losing her daughter and the fears of not being able to mend the ties behind the tough facade of a biker. A couple who have been trying to have a baby for years and who must face that nothing is working, leaving them broken-hearted and exhausted. The guy who at first comes across as extremely obnoxious and even disgusting turns out to be a genuinely good person, even if rough around the edges. The best of it though for me was the last chapter, when June has finished someone else's list and is beginning her own, beginning her own life after years of going with the flow and not taking her life into her own hands. She's sitting there and she still doesn't know what to put on that list, what it is she wants. She's just like so many of those of us who are great at following instructions but not necessarily writing them, even for ourselves. And yet she's gotten a taste of what it's like to finish something and what it's like to keep trying regardless of how far this trying takes her out of the cocoon of her comfort zone so she writes something down and surprises even herself with what it is. She'll do it too, I know it.
There's plenty of laughs in this book. In fact I giggled through it, all the while thinking about these people who inspired June and Deedee and Bob and Troy and Marissa. They're out there, eating at restaurants, driving cars, making mistakes and trying new things. To me fiction is life, disguised as make-believe for the benefit of entertainment but it's all real, it all happened somewhere to someone to some degree. Even if the story is undeniably fantasy, there's real people in there underneath the blue skin and fur and antennae. Here Ms. Smolinski simply didn't go as far as antennae, she stopped at making them all real and you know when an author has done a good job when the next morning you're still thinking about the twists and turns and the outcome. I finished the book last night. Today mid-morning my text to a friend read "I still can't get over June and Martucci and that the girl didn't even call her to tell her she decided to not give up the baby!!". Enough said.