Cheese Souffle vs Grilled Cheese

Put succinctly I had a love/hate relationship with Julie Powell's book Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. Unlike some of her critics I do applaud Powell's leap from the world of blogging into that of a published author. Many of her detractors have made it all about the food but that wasn't why she embarked on 524 Recipes in 365 days; Jennie Yabroff in her Newsweek article Stop Hating Julie Powell, Please covers this well.

What Ms. Powell did need was someone to remind her that when people stop reading your words for free and start laying down money for your book, you then have an obligation to give them a reasonably professional product and that is where she just doesn't deliver. Some of her word choices and phrasing were barely at a high school grammar 101 level. Attempts to be avant guard through drawing on sexual encounters (hers and those of her friends), a preoccupation with her own body odors and the ad nauseum descriptions about the grunge and filth of her apartment were imitations of twenty-something writers who had gone before her and who have done it so much better.

When she isn't trying so hard and returns to the realness of her life the book improves. I enjoyed reading about the bona fide world of Julie Powell. This is also where she stops being a blogger and remembers that she is an author as her prose takes us through the drudgery of her day job, her escalating enthusiasm for cooking, to her growing obsession with completing the project Mastering the Art of French Cooking and even her feelings for Julia Child.

It was a stark contrast indeed that while reading Julie & Julia I came across a piece of work by Elizabeth McCracken. After years and years and years of reading it is not often that one can still stumble on an author who really draws you in, This Does Not Have to Be a Secret from her book An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination does just that.

She has a wonderful style that never slips into some of the slickness that so many do. She writes about life events and emotions with a refreshing clarity and where I really felt a connection was her sense of humor; the 'dwarves of grief' that she refers to will forever have a place in my imagination and I will definitely be ordering one of her books for my winter reading

Authors such as Elizabeth McCracken provide a quality source of reading pleasure, and while pop culture figures such as Julie Powell may stretch their 15 minutes of fame into 30; I for one won't be finding the time to read any more of her books.