Is it too much to say I'm "savor"-ing every word? Yes, it's too much. But it's true.

I recently picked up a copy of Julia Powell's Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job, and Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living. How's that for the overachiever of all subtitles? Anyway, I was hoping to read the book before seeing the movie, because that's just how I roll. And what a fabulous surprise: the book is a treat on every level. I was a little apprehensive, given the many hostile reviews this book has received on Amazon. One person even intimated that she was tossing her copy in the recycling bin. Ouch! Okay, so Julie Powell makes no secret of the fact that she dislikes Republicans, and maybe that puts some people off. But to call her narcissistic is a little misguided. Um, her name is part of the title, so I'm thinking most readers will see this one coming ... it's a book about Julie Powell! Yes, she's the star of her own life story, so you can hardly cast this one as a bait-and-switch. But don't take my word for it; try this appetizing sample of Powell's writing to decide if this book is to your taste (all puns fully intended):

"I'd never been to the Pathmark, and let me tell you, I'm never going again. There's nothing I need that much. The sliding doors at the Pathmark open into a wide, white, empty hallway, totally devoid of any sign of life or foodstuffs. At any moment I expected to see a chiseled Aryan commandant come around the corner to usher me along: 'Ja, please, right this way, take a cart, the food is just through here.' But I was at last funneled into not a gas chamber but a glaring white supermarket the size of a stadium, where for the price of the existential horror felt upon witnessing families buying two carts full of RC cola and generic cheese doodles [...] I could procure sugar cubes" (100).

Side note: my brother Evan tells me that in order to make Meryl Streep look more like the physically imposing, 6'2" Julia Child, they used a slightly miniaturized set so that she would loom over her surrounds. They also peopled the film with unusually small actors. Also known as actors.