Julie and Julia

I've been seeing commercials for this movie for a few months now, and I'm anxious to see it. As with most movies, I'll wait until it hits our local second run theater to see it (or, I'll wait until it's on DVD).

Julie Powell, the author of Julie and Julia, spent a year cooking every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it. The book tells snippets of Julia Child's life, as well as detailing Powell's year of cooking.

A few weeks ago, I saw an interview with Powell and discovered that Julia Child hadn't liked her blog. It made me feel bad for Powell to have invested so much of herself into the book, and then find out that Julia Child was disappointed.

Yesterday, I picked up my copy of Julie and Julia from the library. I'm only a few chapters into it, but, I have to tell you, I'm agreeing with Julia on this one.

Maybe it was my expectations. I love reading The Pioneer Woman's blog or The Crockpot Lady's. I was expecting a funny, "hang out with me" story. But, the thing is, while I would love to hang out with the Pioneer Woman or the Crockpot Lady, I don't think I'd like to hang out with Powell.

Certain things set me off right from the start. She discusses harvesting her eggs for money. I don't care for her language. She discusses some, er, reading material that her father had hidden (a book, not magazines) and how her experience reading that is similar to her experience reading Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

But, perhaps these offenses could have been overlooked if I wasn't detecting an underlying tone in her writing. She's appalled by the fact that she may have to live her life as a mere secretary, even though she isn't really working very hard to get an acting career going.

During the course of the past year, I've become overly sensitive to and irritated by elitest attitudes and snobbery towards people living ordinary lives. I'm sensing a mindset of privilege in Powell. She annoys me.

But, I will continue to read the book and I'll amend this post if necessary.

I'm hoping the book doesn't ruin the movie for me.