Media 2010, Post 13: books.
First, the book that I read all through February and finally finished on Sunday.
Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell ★★★
You know, I was so excited for this book, but I didn't actually love it. Oh, I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. There were just a few factors that dampened my would-be love for the book. First, not everything from Mastering the Art of French Cooking sounds even remotely appetizing. One of the truly horrific, gag-inducing sections was about extracting the marrow out of a beef bone. There was also another completely disgusting-sounding recipe, but I forget what it was. I mean, props to Powell's writing skills for getting me seriously grossed out, but yeah. Second, I fell absolutely in LOVE with the Julie Powell in the film adaptation as played by Amy Adams. The Julie who is real is a little too real (and simultaneously unrealistic) for me - I found her at times just annoying or scatterbrained. Most of the time I did actually like her, but it's like when you're expecting to see your best friend, but instead you end up spending the afternoon with someone who is just a buddy. Still fun, but not what you were anticipating.
Third, and most important, is that I think I just don't do memoirs very well. Biographies? Sure. But memoirs? They don't have to have a structure, and so the author can skip around and topic jump as much as they want. And sometimes I found myself being slightly frustrated as to her jumping around. Fourth was the way she included her friends. I could keep track of her family because there was quite a bit of actual character building and defining of them, but I think she had either two or three of her close girl friends, and I still can't tell you their names. That bugged me slightly.
But it was, overall, an enjoyable read. If you are into memoirs, and if you aren't an insane fiend for character development like me, then you'll probably really enjoy this book a lot.
The History of England by Jane Austen ★★
Last night I finally picked this book up off the shelf. I got it for Christmas of '08, so just two Christmases ago. I read through some of the introductory material, and then I went to sleep. Today I read Jane's part on the train and then the bus to school. It was fine.
Interesting story, though. So, the book has actual facsimile pages of Jane Austen's original manuscript for this, complete with illustrations by her sister Cassandra. So I set to reading that, and after two pages, I snapped the book shut in frustration because I'm unused to that sort of script... and, really, Jane didn't worry about having the best penmanship when she was writing that. The letters are not very well defined. Yeah, I'll say it to you, Jane Austen: you just didn't have the greatest handwriting when you clearly didn't care about it. Anyway, lucky for me I opened it up again a few minutes later to see if there was any post material - and there was actually the whole transcript of the manuscript. So, yay for that.
My enjoyment of the text was heeded by two large things. First, I think that just generally, a reader needs to have much more background knowledge of the history of England to know what she's talking about. Second, she wrote this for her siblings, so it's also like... a total inside joke kind of thing. It was charming, and she was clever, but I'll be honest and say that I know that I seriously didn't get all of it and couldn't appreciate it. And I'm sure that there's even a need to be alive at that time, as I'm sure it also had culturally relevant jokes for what was happening at the time. So if you were part of Jane's family, or alive at that time, or a historian, or even British, I'm sure it would be much more charming than it was for me. It's not like I didn't like it, I just got mild enjoyment from it and am sure I'm missing most of what would be amusing and make it epicly awesome.
Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell ★★★
You know, I was so excited for this book, but I didn't actually love it. Oh, I enjoyed it, but I didn't love it. There were just a few factors that dampened my would-be love for the book. First, not everything from Mastering the Art of French Cooking sounds even remotely appetizing. One of the truly horrific, gag-inducing sections was about extracting the marrow out of a beef bone. There was also another completely disgusting-sounding recipe, but I forget what it was. I mean, props to Powell's writing skills for getting me seriously grossed out, but yeah. Second, I fell absolutely in LOVE with the Julie Powell in the film adaptation as played by Amy Adams. The Julie who is real is a little too real (and simultaneously unrealistic) for me - I found her at times just annoying or scatterbrained. Most of the time I did actually like her, but it's like when you're expecting to see your best friend, but instead you end up spending the afternoon with someone who is just a buddy. Still fun, but not what you were anticipating.
Third, and most important, is that I think I just don't do memoirs very well. Biographies? Sure. But memoirs? They don't have to have a structure, and so the author can skip around and topic jump as much as they want. And sometimes I found myself being slightly frustrated as to her jumping around. Fourth was the way she included her friends. I could keep track of her family because there was quite a bit of actual character building and defining of them, but I think she had either two or three of her close girl friends, and I still can't tell you their names. That bugged me slightly.
But it was, overall, an enjoyable read. If you are into memoirs, and if you aren't an insane fiend for character development like me, then you'll probably really enjoy this book a lot.
The History of England by Jane Austen ★★
Last night I finally picked this book up off the shelf. I got it for Christmas of '08, so just two Christmases ago. I read through some of the introductory material, and then I went to sleep. Today I read Jane's part on the train and then the bus to school. It was fine.
Interesting story, though. So, the book has actual facsimile pages of Jane Austen's original manuscript for this, complete with illustrations by her sister Cassandra. So I set to reading that, and after two pages, I snapped the book shut in frustration because I'm unused to that sort of script... and, really, Jane didn't worry about having the best penmanship when she was writing that. The letters are not very well defined. Yeah, I'll say it to you, Jane Austen: you just didn't have the greatest handwriting when you clearly didn't care about it. Anyway, lucky for me I opened it up again a few minutes later to see if there was any post material - and there was actually the whole transcript of the manuscript. So, yay for that.
My enjoyment of the text was heeded by two large things. First, I think that just generally, a reader needs to have much more background knowledge of the history of England to know what she's talking about. Second, she wrote this for her siblings, so it's also like... a total inside joke kind of thing. It was charming, and she was clever, but I'll be honest and say that I know that I seriously didn't get all of it and couldn't appreciate it. And I'm sure that there's even a need to be alive at that time, as I'm sure it also had culturally relevant jokes for what was happening at the time. So if you were part of Jane's family, or alive at that time, or a historian, or even British, I'm sure it would be much more charming than it was for me. It's not like I didn't like it, I just got mild enjoyment from it and am sure I'm missing most of what would be amusing and make it epicly awesome.