Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously - A Review

I just finished Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell and I must say that I hated it. The book was a prize I received from another blogger's giveaway. I was excited to get it because I had always meant to see the movie, but had never gotten around to it. I think my first problem was my expectations - I thought the movie was based on this book only, not realizing that it was actually based on both this book AND Julia Child's My Life in France. So, I got about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through and thought Julia Child isn't in this book AT ALL! At about the same time, my friend commented about seeing the movie on Facebook, I commented about this book, and then one of her other friends set me straight about the movie being based on TWO books.

That aside, I still didn't care for the book. There were interesting parts and I was intrigued about all the steps that went into Julia's recipes, but the overriding factor that made me dislike the book is that I REALLY disliked Julie. She was just SO self-absorbed and just overall not a nice person. I guess I have a hard time enjoying any book when I don't really give a ____ about the protagonist. It's not often I don't enjoy a book since I'm usually careful about what I read, but this is one that I was dragging through and happy to finish. Actually, I read the last pages in bed and totally freaked out my husband when I yelled "I'm finished!" since I was so glad to be rid of that book.