This book was like a monologue from the drunkest gal at the party - she thinks she is witty and entertaining, but her anecdotes don't lead anywhere and don't fit together in a narrative sense. Plus, her name-dropping is annoying, especially since most of the people are not famous. ( )

Highly engaging combination of home renovation saga, food writing, and Katrina memoir. The author is a clearly wealthy contributing editor for Vogue and Newsweek whose historic home survives the storm and its aftermath. The focus is on the food industry in the wake of the storm. This proves to be a truly unique perspective. There is plenty of grit and graphic bits to represent the abundance of horrors the Crescent City endured. While the availability of fresh oysters and lump crabmeat cannot possibly compare with the carnage, there is merit in the notion that life, and the party (in New Orleans, anyway), must go on. The author also repeatedly acknowledges with great wonder at her good fortune as well as her immense guilt at having same. I truly enjoyed this book. ( )

To say this book is a disappointment would be an understatement. The first part of the book is about her love of the city and how she came to decide to live in New Orleans full time. At age 44, she (and her new husband) bought the house on First Street and proceeded to hire a contractor they knew next to nothing about. Her tales of woe at how incompetent he was might have been supposed to be humorous, but I just felt irritated at how incompetent she was to have hired him in the first place and then put up with him.

Then Katrina came to New Orleans, and Julia and her husband decamped for her parents' home in Mississippi, where it was left up to her tv-watching mother to keep them apprised of what was happening in New Orleans. Julia is sorely disappointed when the local stores run out of her favorite liquor. She finally returns to New Orleans with her reporter's credentials from Newsweek to write about what's happening in the city and to check out her home. Although there are some interesting anecdotes and stories of this time, mostly she seems to fall back on writing about visiting her friends and what they had to eat and drink.

If Julia Reed hadn't kept going on and on about what she drank (trust me, it was a LOT!), what she ate, her favorite restaurants, and all the parties she went to and gave, the book wouldn't be very long. NOT recommended. ( )

This is the story of how Julia Reed found a husband and a house and a home in New Orleans, and what happened during and after Katrina. She is a fine writer, engaging and witty, and the subject matter should be compelling. So why didn't I like this book?

Perhaps it's a flaw in my character, but when someone has the regular services of a maid, and said maid's extended family when throwing cocktail parties for 100, and has a handyman (however drug-addicted) on call, when that person can buy a mansion in the Garden District that has a dining room which holds a table seating twenty-four and proceeds to renovate that mansion with extravagantly expensive materials, I find it difficult to summon up much sympathy when she complains about the costs she's incurring. Nor, when the house is left nearly unscathed by Katrina, can I empathize with her worries about her jewelry and whether her champagne will be ruined by the heat.

It's very odd, because Reed seems like a generous, warm-hearted, fun-loving person, the kind of woman I'd probably like to hang out with. But there's a disconnect that I can't quite fathom between that person and the one who has to keep bending over to pick up the names she's dropping. And that irritated me to the point where I simply could not enjoy her book.