Life as a Project
I just loved the first 2/3rds of Not Buying it My Year of Not Shopping by Judith Levine, a personal life-as-project book. Judith and her partner Paul decide that for the next year they aren’t going to buy anything but necessities. No DVD rentals. No fancy bath soap (Ivory is ok). They debate about whether they can buy mesclun salad mix or just head lettuce (head lettuce only). Author Levine really got into it. She delves pretty deep into what we get out of shopping emotionally and as a method of being part of public life, without making it a harangue.
The book is written in diary form and is great until about October when her obsession with the 2004 presidential election takes over. Give me the no-shopping project over another angsty account of national politics any day.
If you’re interested there’s a whole cottage industry of books and films about these kinds of undertakings. Out last year, Julia & Julie: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen is another I loved. In that one Julie Powell cooks all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. Morgan Spurlock’s film Super Size Me chronicled his all-McDonald’s-meals-for-a-month diet and it’s not to be missed.
Comments
I am in the minority but I did't like Julie and Julia very much. Everyone else I know loved the book. While I enjoyed some of the cooking stories and especially those where she was dealing with very complicated recipes and unfamiliar ingredents, I could not feel much sympathy for Julie Powell and her complaints about her job and her life.
Amen sister, I didn't enjoy Julie and Julia"" at all. Thank goodness
Another, more visual project book"" that appeals to the foodie voyeur in me is Everything I Ate: a Year in the Life of my Mouth by Tucker Shaw. The author made a New Year's resolution to photograph everything he ate for an entire year
I thought the cooking stories in Julie and Julia were entertaining enough to carry the book. I had no idea how gruesome a made-from-scratch aspic could be. Or, that it seemingly takes the collective resources of the greater New York City shopping area to gather all the ingredients for Julia's recipes. I was also interested in the aspect of the story that related to people having a strong emotional bond and identification with people they did not personally know: the author with Julia Child and the author's blog readers with herself. Her negative attitude toward her job was off-putting sometimes but it also made me wonder how the stress of working closely with Sept 11 survivors may have affected the rest of her life.
I gotta read this. The first mention I heard of it was not all that positive
Now, Nichole, be careful-- everyone above is talking about Julie and Julia, not the fine book I reviewed called My Year of Not Shopping. I see your 'first mention' above is for the shopping book. Come on gals... try Shopping and see if perhaps you hate all project books and not just poor Julie Powell's. (Can I say I LOVED Julie and Julia? Yes, she did get histronic at times, but that's what made it so true-to-life.)
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