I picked up Julie Powell's Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously the summer of 2009. I had heard all of the movie-hype for Powell's work, and being a firm believer in the old adage "the book is always better than the film," I had wanted to read Powell's own words first. I am so glad I did.I was immediately surprised by Powell's language and sentence structure after reading the first few pages. I had seen advertisements for the upcoming film... how could a book-soon-to-be-film staring Meryl Streep contain so much profanity? In hindsight, however, I understand that Powell's language helps solidify the characters within her writing.
In fact, I soon came to love her work. Powell's writing is sharp, engaging, and ever-so funny. I wanted to finish it as soon as possible - I needed to know how the story ended. I began to wonder about the blogging world in ways that I hadn't before as Powell chronicled her cooking and blogging experience. I'll admit that when I started up this blog I had visions of Powell and the experiences described in her work.
It has been two years since reading Julie and Julia - why, after so long, am I blogging about it? It is because Powell's writing has stuck with me. I can still vividly see the scenarios and characters that Powell describes in her work. I can clearly recall her hilarious and sometimes sad cooking episodes... just the thought of cooking a lobster makes me giggle.
Are books really better than their counterpart films? I recently saw Julie and Julia on DVD. I did enjoy the film. But, to me, Powell's characters and plot thrive in the written words on the pages of a book. It is their environment. I guess I'm a bookie through and through.
Bibliographical Information:
Powell, Julie. Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009.
I saw this movie when it came out and though I enjoyed it, I wasn't inspired with a great ambition to go read the book. Now that I know the voice is quite different maybe I'll have to pick it up!
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen the movie but I had the same reaction you did to the amount of cursing in the book: how did they make this into such a seemingly family-friendly movie? Don't get me wrong, I loved that she was such a foul-mouthed cook, especially in the scene where she was practicing tossing beans in a pan outside and told the out-of-towners just how lost they were.
ReplyDeleteI usually read the book first however Julie and Julia was one exception. I'm not sure how it happened that I watched the movie first but I did and until just now I had forgotten that I hadn't read the book. When you were talking about the language I found myself thinking "hmmm... I didn't remember anything particularly striking about it" and thats when I remembered that I hadn't read it! Oops!
ReplyDeleteI usually either read the book or watch the movie, very rarely both. One or the other usually disappoints.
ReplyDeleteAnn