Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job, & Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living » (Abridged, 5 CDs, 6 hours)

Julie Powell was on the verge of turning 30, trapped in a series of unfulfilling temp jobs, and living in a dreadful apartment in Queens, New York. That s when she decided to break the monotony by attempting to make all 524 recipes in Julia Child s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. One year later, Powell had achieved her goal, documented her experiences on one of the most popular blogs on the Internet, and began the award-winning, bestselling book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.

With the humor of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs, Julie Powell recounts how she conquered every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and saved her soul.

Julie Powell is 30 years old, living in a tiny apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that's going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's worn, dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes -- in the span of one year.

At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crepes, she realizes there's more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye.

And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her outer-borough kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life's ordinariness through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.

About the Author
Born and raised in Austin, Texas, JULIE POWELL has resided in one place or another in the outer boroughs of New York City for the past eight years. Currently, she lives in Long Island City, New York, with her husband, Eric, three cats, and a snake.

The Washington Post - Lauren F. Winner

Toward the end of the book, unfortunately, Powell's descriptions of the journalists who get interested in the Julie/Julia Project begin to overwhelm the project itself…Still…Powell is offbeat, eccentric and never too self-serious. Moreover, she understands something important. In an era when our bosses expect us to spend our lives at the office, she understands that life can't be all about your job. In an era when hostesses are praised for the food they picked up at Zabar's, she understands that there is something glorious and elemental in cooking. She has introduced ritual and meaning into an ordinary life. Not everyone will find her ritual and meaning with Julia Child, of course, but this book will inspire and encourage readers to find it somewhere.