Julie and Julia and Blogging

Stephanie and I saw Julie and Julia on Friday. I was surprised to see how much blogging was in the film, complete with a recreation of the interface that existed on screen when Julie Powell started blogging in 2002. It provided an interesting contrast to what Julia Child (as portrayed in the film) went through to get her first cookbook published, complete with using carbon paper to type hundreds of pages of manuscript, and sending off these manuscripts to publishers. Cutting back to Julie's story, it didn't seem to take her as long--just several months (as opposed to Child's years of toil)--before she was getting several comments a day on her blog. It seemed that Julia's path to getting a readership was much more arduous and time-consuming, but finally paid off in the publishing of her opus, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In the bookstore over the weekend, I saw it on display in its original cover and using the same original paper almost as a museum piece. There was kind of a comfort in seeing it in its original form. Meanwhile, we learn from yesterday's New York Times that textbooks are going out of style. Given the display I saw of the original cookbook presented in its original form, one can see books themselves as becoming "retro." Good thing I can blog about this!