On the other hand, I read Julie Powell’s book, Julie and Julia, and it was less than inspiring.  While I’m sure she was inspired, like many, by Julia Child, I found her book somewhat disrespectful to Julia Child, and I found Julie Powell’s writing to be glib, offensive, and sensationalistic.  While we all want to see similarities between ourselves and those we admire, her constant attempts to draw parallels between her life and JC’s (her moniker, not mine) and her comments on the Great Book (Julia Child’s cookbook, again, her moniker) leave a lot to be desired.  Powell attempts to tell an amusing story about her own life, tied together by tales of her attempts to cook all 500-plus recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1, but the cooking takes a back seat, and it’s not amusing.  I like Amy Adams, who will play Powell, but I’m not eager to revisit Powell’s story.

Given my lack of enthusiasm about the book, I’m hesitant to see the movie and wondered if my hesitance was unfounded.  I also wondered if I was the only one interested in only half of the movie.  Last night I read a review of the movie on Gourmet’s site and found that I’m not alone.  I think I’ll wait for the DVD so I can take Shapiro’s advice and, if need be, read (or simply fast-forward) through the Powell half of the movie.

Unfortunately, the Project is just a thread that barely ties Powell’s book together.  She uses the book as a sounding board to share fictionalized stories about her friend’s drunken sexcapades, true stories about her own marriage, and anything else that she feels like talking about – everything from her political leanings to her apartment’s plumbing problems to her laments about her depressing dead-end job.  In between reading e-mails from friends, yelling at her husband, and trying to sleep with another married man, there are some tales of Powell actually cooking some of Child’s recipes.  I wouldn’t even have minded the rest of her stories, but some of them were kind of offensive (and I think I’m usually pretty open-minded)  and most of them weren’t as funny as the book cover would have you believe.  Furthermore, Powell invents a lot of stories about Paul and Julia Child, which seemed unnecessary given the amount of information available on them.  It seems to be a weak attempt to draw parallels between her life and Child’s.

That said, the portions where Powell is actually cooking are interesting.  She places a cooking icon in a modern-day world and we get to see how relevant Child and her recipes are today.  It also causes one to give though to how different food and food television might be if it weren’t for Child.  Some of Powell’s adventures really are amusing - attempting to euthanize a lobster, poaching eggs in red wine and watching them turn blue, or figuring out how to get the bone marrow out of a large animal thigh bone.  The book is a quick read – I probably would have given up on it, but I was able to finish it quickly and move on to other foodie adventures.

Powell’s book is being released as a movie (also titled Julie and Julia)  this August, starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep (the movie will purportedly follow Julia and Paul’s lives more truthfully than the book does).  Powell also has another book due in August, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession.