Book Review: My Life in France

I am totally charmed by Julia Child after reading her book My Life in France which she wrote with her grand-nephew, Alex Prud'Homme. The book begins with her move to Paris with her husband, Paul Child, just after WWII. Paul is in the diplomatic service and they are posted there for several years. During that time she falls in love with La Belle France, the French people, and French food. She attends Le Cordon Bleu to learn to cook with style and succeeds beautifully, or maybe that should be she succeeds deliciously! (Warning: do not read this book on an empty stomach.) ;) The book continues with additional postings to a more rural area of France, then Germany and Oslo, and back to the United States and follows Julia's career as a cook book author, cooking teacher, and through her roles on television. She and Paul finally build a small house in France and stay there for part of every year. The book is both a love song to France and food as much as it is an auto-biography of Julia herself.

There is another book associated with the movie but I don't have any plans to read that one. I've looked at the blog associated with the book and it didn't catch my interest. The author of the blog details her efforts to cook every recipe in Julia's first cook book (written with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle) Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I didn't spend too much time on the site, but what I saw couldn't even begin to compare to the food blogs out there now, but I've already talked about the blog when I wrote up my movie review.

Suffice to say, if you consider yourself a foodie, if you travel, if you love France, if you like to read biographies, or if you have any interest in Julia Child, this is the book to read.