First off, a couple of observations about this book:

1) Julie Powell has a tendency to use the f-word with abandon. It’s really not a big revelation: she admits that she has a total sailor mouth.

2) It’s not really a food book.

With that out of the way, I can honestly say that I enjoyed this book. Julie turned 29 (which makes her a year younger than me, since the book happens in 2002), and is stuck in a dead-end secretarial job working for a “government agency” in New York City. Depressed, she’s looking for… something… more. Her husband suggests a cooking class. She scoffs and said that she could learn as much from cooking through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And thus, the “Project” is born. 365 days, 524 recipes.

It’s a funny book, though I thought that there was something missing. Perhaps it’s because I thought there’d be more about the food (it’s subtitled “My year of cooking dangerously” after all…). It’s mostly about her life (and her friends’ lives) with some witticisms about blogging, cooking in a tiny kitchen, killing lobsters, and eating calf livers. And I can totally relate to her wanting to accomplish something (even if it is “only” cooking her way through a Julia Child book) with her life. So, if you can get past the first two observations, it’s a pretty fun little read.