My Life in France

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme is a terrific read for your quarter (or one third) life crisis. At age 36, Julia Child moved to France with her new husband Paul, speaking no French and newly retired from the O.S.S.. In looking for a way to occupy her time, she turned her new found love of French cuisine into first a hobby, then a job teaching cooking and then a career, publishing cooking books, staring in her first PBS series and becoming Julia Child, cooking celebrity. Refeshingly, Julia doesn't hesitate to say what she thinks, she remains unrepentingly critical of her father through out the book, and recounts her differences with Simone Beck, one of her co-authors on Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The book was written shortly before her death with the assistance of her nephew, Alex Prud'Homme and I was shocked it wasn't on any of the best of the year book lists.