Cut that meat! Cleaving by Julie Powell

Cleaving, Julie Powell's second book, is about her butcher internship at a small butcher shop in upstate New York. I imagine after her crazy success with her first book, Julie and Julia, she had more time and money on her hands than she knew what to do with. She used this butchering business as a diversion. That and an affair and overindulgence in wine. She could have just as easily done something different, like counting cracks in the sidewalks of Manhattan or watching paint dry so I suppose it was at least useful, but man, she's one self-indulged freak!

It was a little difficult to read all about her cheating on her husband, and staying with him, and him cheating on her, and the way this D character treated her and how pitifully she pursued him. Oh brother. And all that meat talk wasn't that pleasant to me. I mean, I hate to cut the fat off steak to make stir fry, and forget cutting up a whole chicken. Those suckers go in the crock pot or the oven if they even make it home. But it wasn't as bad as My Year of Meats, which just begged to gross people out. It was a very good novel but gross as hell, in parts.

 What grosses you out?

Book Read:  Cleaving
Author:  Julie Powell
ISBN: 978-0-316-00336-0

Half Broke Horses, the winner by a head

Well, I did something I hardly ever do. I started reading one book then started another before finishing the first one. Shame. The first book? The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.

I know! I love her books, usually. I'm having trouble loving this one though. I started it, liked it okay but never really got absorbed in the storyline. Those darned foreign settings. They trip me up nearly every time. This one is set in Mexico and the U.S. I don't know what it is. I guess I just can't relate.

Anyway, I saw Half Broke Horses on the New Books table at the Phoenix library when I was picking up some movies on the reserve shelf. I grabbed it! I loved The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. If you love memoirs (I do!) and you love larger than life tales (I do!), I think you'll love it. So, I figured I'd also like Half Broke Horses. I did.

The cover calls it "a true life novel," because it's based on Walls' maternal grandmother's life but she wrote it in first person and filled in the blanks, the details when she really didn't know exactly what was said or some of what happened. But this was as good as The Glass Castle, in my opinion. The book covers Lily Casey Smith's life from when she was about 10 years old till the 1950s. The woman was incredible. We have nothing to complain about.

I zipped through the book, then went to the Scottsdale library to pick up some movies (yes, I watch a lot of movies) and saw Cleaving, sitting on the New Non-fiction shelf, by that narcissistic whiner Julie Powell (Julie and Julia). So, I sat down to read a little to see if I could stomach it; it's about her new-found love--being a butcher. Yick. I hate cutting up meat, but I have to admit, I got sucked it. So, now I'm reading it. I must be in a memoir mood.

We'll see if in a few days when I finish Cleaving if The Lacuna opens up to me again.

Book Read:  Half Broke Horses
Author:  Jeannette Walls
ISBN: 978-0-670-02165-9