Julie/Julia and the impact of a book

So, what they don't tell you about being the parent of young children is that you will only see the movies you want if you rent them (and usually only get to watch them if said children are gone, and in my case, the husband too!) which is how I ended up watching Julie & Julia this morning to my delight. Very cute and Meryl Streep is delightful as Julia Child. The thing that struck me the most, and I must admit that I haven't read either book that the movie was based on (Julie Powell's or the bio on Julia Child) so I don't know any hard facts, was the way that Streep played Julia Child -- she was so full of joy that she looked like she was going to burst. How many people do you ever see that are so full of joy like that? And that joy was something that translated to those around her via her cookbook or her show. People could intrinsically sense that she loved what she was doing and wanted you to love it too. That "joy through osmosis" from her cookbook was able to help Powell through a rough patch in her life, like many books are able to do. Isn't that why we (the "lifers") are in the book business, either on the writing side, the publishing side, or the bookselling side? We believe that books are life changing -- they have the power to affect people's lives in a profound way. As a bookseller and a book buyer, you dream (at least I do at times) of being able to be find the right perfect book that a person is looking for at just the right time. I get excited at the start of every publishing season because of all of the things that are coming, and the possibilities for each. The impact doesn't have to be huge, it could just be a few minutes of blissful escapism, or it can be something so shattering as Randy Pausch's Last Lecture has been for millions of people. But each one has the possibility for that kind of change, and that is an amazing thing.