Julie and Julia

I finished Julie and Julia. (#9)I found this book quite annoying to be honest. I found the writing style overly wordy and hard to get through. I found the author to be pretentious and a little snobby. How on earth did she have enough money to buy all of these crazy ingredients all the time, even though she was a temp? (Which was made quite clear through out the book). I also thought she assumed a lot. There seem to be a lot of skills necessary to complete such a project and somehow magically Julie knew all of them. Now, I am a cooking novice here and I just didn't quite understand all the techniques she was talking about half the time. I didn't realize it was a requirement.

Her endless ranting about her friends and "bleaders" was just plain obnoxious. Who cares about your friend Isabel or Sally or whats-her-name. Sometimes I found this book more to be about her weirdo friends than cooking. And then all of a sudden national newspapers and TV shows start calling? All because of this cooking blog? Hummm.. not sure I buy it. To me it just seemed she was bragging about it and made me dislike her even more.

But kudos to her for completing her goal. I always like to see and hear about people who follow through on things.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I also finished a Breath of Fresh Air. (#41) This book wasn't quite what I was expecting. It was mostly an Indian love story. But that doesn't mean I am discounting it. It was beautifully written and laid out. I liked how there was a bit of mystery to it. I loved how real the characters were. They were all very human. The author did a fantastic job of building the novella up.

I enjoyed very much the switching points of view so the reader was able to get a clear concise picture of what was happening, and not just who was initially perceived to be the main character, Anjali.

I also appreciated all of the Indian history that was thrown into the mix; The Bhopal Gas tragedy (which I honestly knew nothing about, but now thankfully I am reading up on) as well as Indira Ghandi's murder.

At first I thought I was going to be disappointed, but in the end I was not at all. Though I thought the ending was a bit lackluster.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Next up: The Known World