Originally published in 2006.

It's hard to imagine how reading a book about food and recipes could be so interesting and entertaining, but it is, and down to the very last page. When you read how much time and effort Julia put into each and every single recipe in both Mastering the Art of French Cooking 1 & 2, you may want to locate copies for your own library. I But beware, Julia claims in the book, "My Life in France", that every edition required revisions and things corrected that had been missed or measurements that had been written out wrong, i.e.: 2 cups corrected to 2 tsps. These mistakes infuriated her because no matter how many times she went over it, she would always find mistakes. And Julia was a perfectionist!

You will find that Julia drops the "f" bomb a lot during the first half of the book..."french" words, phrases and sentences without explaining what they mean. You can choose to just skim over them or, as I did, download a free French pronunciation app onto your phone to help pronounce and decipher the meanings. Don't let this deter you from reading the book. It's still an excellent story, an excellent book. She revisits France for the last time back in about 1992, to pack up the rest of her and Paul's things. It's very sad that many of her friends and co-author had already passed on. She doesn't find leaving her beloved France as hard as she thought because it was the people who made France home and a part of her heart, not France, itself.

Gave book to my daughter, Cara. ( )

The very intersting story of Julia Child and how she became, well, Julia Child. I only have one reservation about the book which is, as Julia herself writes, she is not a sentimental person and sometimes I wished for more about how she felt. She is most effusive writing about food and less so about people, including her husband. Still, I enjoyed the book a lot and I'm glad I read it. ( )

I didn't really know that much about Julia before I read this other than the little I have seen on PBS and that movie Julie & Julia. I thought the book was amazing and showed how much work she put into her 2 volumes of cookbooks. Make me want to get the 2 cookbooks now and try a few things!
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Fun. Julia is kind of a nut. ( )

Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia's unforgettable story--struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe--unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia's success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America's most endearing personalities.