On blogging...

Nowadays anyone with a crap laptop and Internet access can sound their barbaric yawp, whatever it may be. But the surprise is that for every person who's got something to say, it seems there are at least a few people who are interested. Some of them aren't even related. ... There's a dangerous, confessional thrill to opening up your eminently fascinating life and brain to the world at large, and the Internet makes it all so much faster and more breathless and exciting. ... the blog readers - I was beginning to think of them as my "bleaders"... Here, I took my anger and despair and rage and transformed it with my alchemy into hope and ecstatic mania. Here, I took a crap laptop and some words that popped into my head at seven in the morning, and I turned them into something people wanted, maybe even needed.

These quotes are from Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. The book is based loosely on Julie's real life experience of needing something new and fun in her life, and deciding to cook through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year and blogging about it.

The blog part is fun to read. That thrill of having bleaders.

The next day I got thirty-six hits. I know I got thirty-six hits because I went online to check twelve times that day at work. Each hit represented another person reading what I'd written. Just like that! At the bottom of the entry there was a spot where people could make comments, and someone I'd never even heard of said they liked how I wrote! I was going to eat lots of French food, and write about it, and get compliments from total strangers about it. Eric was right. This was going to be brilliant!

I loved the movie. I'm savoring the book. I love food, I love blogging, I love Julia Child, and I love the amazing love stories in both Julie and Julia's lives. So, my dear bleaders, I give it all two thumbs up. (with the caveat that there is a lot of swearing in the book!)

PS Comments feed bloggers. Please say hello.