My wife and I watched newly received Christmas present and thoroughly enjoyable Julie & Julia yesterday. And, upon seeing how blogging reinvigorated 30-something Julie Powell into a meaningful existence, I decided that I, too, can be reinvigorated. DTABC has more or less been on a hiatus for the last six months, and I need some inspiration: not by cooking a French recipe a day, but by reading - wait for it - a book a day! Starting January 1st, I would read a book a day for a grand total of 365 books by January 1st, 2011. I was ready to go: a book a day, and real books, like Dickens and Tolstoy and Pynchon and Atwood - no grey areas, such as novellas or blogs, or Nick Hornby books. I was really inspired... until I read that after Julie Powell completed her massive Julie/Julia Project, she was once again lost and needed to find herself again, and turned to an adulterous affair and an apprenticeship at a butcher shop. After that, she was lost once again and decided to travel to world destinations where beef and meat processing are a major industry. After that, she wrote about her experiences in a new book, Cleaving, about butchering and, apparently, how to butcher personal relationships.
And all of a sudden, my fantastic dream of 365 books in 2010 disappeared. It was an impossible dream, if Powell was my guide. As Kim Moritsugu of The Globe & Mail writes, "the real Julie Powell is no Amy Adams". By all accounts, Cleaving is a self-absorbed tell-all that tells too much, and she takes up butchering "for reasons that are not made clear (nor even explored)". An unmitigated disaster, really: "Reading this book is like watching an automobile crash in slow motion". Ouch!A fellow blogger, Jen from A Book a Week With Jen, felt similarly inspired by Powell's lead, and her blog is a result. She is still going strong, but her review of Cleaving shows that she's outgrown her mentor and become her own blogger:
"The reason I don't like the book is because the retelling of the whole sordid thing is dull. She whines -- a lot. Powell becomes that best friend who is dating the absolute wrong guy, knows it, still does it, and won't shut up about it." (Good for you!!)I decided that the real Julie Powell was a poor role model to follow, and so I will follow the fictional Julie Powell, aka Amy Adams, who is sweet and cute and sympathetic, and I will try to blog on a regular basis if only to keep myself entertained. Of course, my wife will continue to be mortified, but I will persevere: Do Not Talk About Book Club will make a comeback in 2010!
P.S. Notes on Julie & Julia - Jen provides thoughts on the movie, Amy Adams, and Cleaving. She also provides the link to her first review, of Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1Tiny Apartment Kitchen.
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