Title: Julie and Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Author: Julie Powell
Genre: Non- Fiction, Memoir

Another re-read, sue me. This time I read it aloud to B though. We’re really enjoying experiencing books together through me reading out loud to her. I know it must sound silly but it’s really enjoyable and I’m so glad we’re doing it. This was the third title we shared this way and we both enjoyed it equally even though I’d read it before. The review I wrote of it two years ago holds up surprisingly well and is still accurate.

Julie Powell was rapidly approaching 30, unhappy with her job,
frustrated with where she was in her life and unsure where she was
going. All of this sounds way too familiar to me to allow me to even
consider not reading this book.

At that edge of 30 Powell decided to cook every single recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume I
over the course of one year. It was a monumental undertaking to say the
least and it changed her life in ways she never imagined. Through her
year of MtAoFC she kept a blog updating her progress and pitfalls and
all the normal blog fodder. I read her blog a couple times in 2003
while the project was underway but at the time it didn’t mean much to
me so I paid very little attention to it.

This time round though the book means very much. Again, blame it on
my familiarity with the general subject matter (sometimes overwhelming
ennui) but I came away from the book feeling optimistic. Not because
Powell ended up with a book deal, writing gigs, and got to ditch her
white collar worker bee job, but optimistic because she was a bit
different at the end of her project, a bit happier, a bit better.

Powell’s style is very blog-ish in the best possible way -friendly,
familiar, conversational. Even at 300+ pages the book is a breeze to
get through and the cooking success and tragedies are well blended with
stories and anecdotes form other parts of the author’s life. There are
no photos and no recipes, it’s not a cookbook, just a really good
retelling of a time of serious change in one woman’s life.

Title: Under the Tuscan Sun
Author: Frances Mayes
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir

There are two or three books I very much looking forward to re-reading in the first quarter of every year. This is one of them. So I’m just going to quote myself from last year:

This is another re-read and again I deem that to be quite ok. If
there were ever a book that you should read first or better yet instead
of seeing the movie it is this one. The movie is fine as a typical
chick flick but it really has no relation all to the book other than
the name and a very few details. The specifics, the story, the
feelings, the mood, the impressions you are left with are night and day
different from the book to the movie.

The book is earnest, beautifully written, heartfelt and a tiny bit
melodramatic in just the right places. I very much enjoyed reading it
and being transported not just to another place but to another life and
another kind of living. As I approach the next chapter in my life I
hope to carry some memories and inspirations from this book with me.
Such as finding the house you can really love and make a home in.
Finding joy and contentment in the manual labor associated with your
house and home and finding a place in the community you’ve chosen to
settle in. Those things brought so very much joy and deep happiness to
the author I can’t help but hope to follow, in spirit, in her footsteps.

Title: Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Synch
Author: Seth Godin
Genre: Non-Fiction

What can I say? It’s a business book that’s relevant to a lot of the work I do these days. It had a lot of common sense (to me anyway) information in it but you’d be surprised how much more easily a client will go for an idea if you can reference a similar scenario from a Seth Godin book. Seriously.