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| The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story | 
 enlarge | Author: Julia Reed
Publisher: Ecco
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $14.54
You Save: $9.41 (39%)
New (33) Used (8) from $12.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  54 reviews
Sales Rank: 11296
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.8 x 1
ISBN: 0061136646
Dewey Decimal Number: 917.63350463
EAN: 9780061136641
ASIN: 0061136646
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new Book, ALL days Low Price !
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| Customer Reviews:
 Naughty and Nice, Crazy Doins', Great Food, Sombre experiences August 6, 2008
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
I liked the way the narrative in this book rolls along - at times humorous, wry, adventurous. Julia Reed certainly has a knack for descriptive prose - including her wonderful descriptions of her homes, friends, the neighborhood's oddball characters. I particularly enjoyed her descriptions of the incredible local cuisine, and I even started looking for a place that sells beignets and Chicory Coffee to allay some of my hunger, but alas, my neighborhood (slightly south of the East Coast) has a paucity of such items (as a New Yorker, I can't find good Lox and Bagels here either).
But the book is cute -- reminds me of the Sweet Potato Queens series -- funny naughty, humorous -- although some of it comes across like a long rant.
The chapters on Katrina -- Julia as a first-hand eye-witness -- are sobering, putting faces and personalities on the names - showing the strength of human character at times of great tragedy, people banding together to do what had to be done - while there was the inevitable human treachery and deception going on at the same time. I was impressed with the ingenuity and the ability of the Katrina victims to party well, even in the very worst of situations.
But why does Julia extol the bravery of some of the survivors of Katrina, only to ridicule those equally brave souls, many of whom came from out of state, sleeping in their cars, living on junk food, working long long hours with no pay, catching very little sleep and exposing themselves to all kinds of danger to rescue and care for the pets that were left behind? Sure Katrina was a tragedy of epic proportions with major damage and human suffering, but some of that major suffering was felt by the pets that these folks were forced to leave behind -- and by the humans who were forced to leave those pets behind.
Those rescuers, some of whom had to break down doors to get to the pets stranded and dying in sodden moldy flooded homes were from all parts of the nation - and they were trained to do this work specifically for the animals, just as those who worked for the human-centered agencies were doing for the human survivors. Yet Julia uses "cats" as an instrument of ridicule for the process -- when "dogs" were also involved in this disaster. Many of those who had to flee without their pets (including that little boy whose dog "Snowball" was torn from his arms) never knew the ecstatic relief experienced by Julia when she discovered her own dog was safe. And as for the humorous description of the lot full of salvaged refrigerators -- I truly doubt that any of those people who had to leave their pets behind were ecstatic when they learned that their "refrigerator" was safe. So this attitude on her part soured me, blemishing an otherwise interesting and fast paced book
 Silly August 5, 2008
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
I spent a few weeks in New Orleans when in my early twenties. Had a great time. Reed brought back for me some of my memories of the that city and the South.
Trademark humor? But this seemed to me all too much a silly book about remodeling. I suppose most people are reluctant to describe their remodeling experiences. Poor Eddie, I wonder if he realized what having a writer like Reed as a client might lead to. Having survived a remodel, I can sympathize with what Reed went through but it seems to me she's taken it beyond comical extreme. True, one can be stuck with a choice of contractor, true one can exaggerate for effect, true Reed has a flair for writing - but aren't there better books about Katrina, about remodeling experiences, about New Orleans? It seems Reed has come closest to providing a feeling of the latter: I suppose I'd need some good booze in hand to be able to decide. The impact of poverty and of crack makes its way through: that Reed didn't choose some enclave instead to live in says something for her and this book.
 I was lured in... July 1, 2008
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
I was lured in by the excerpt from this book that was published in Vogue magazine. The tantalizing snippet from this wonderful book sent me rapidly to Amazon to order.
Julia Reed paints a vivid picture of her life in Greenville, MS, Manhattan and New Orleans and how it brought her to this house. Both humorous and poignant, it's not difficult to see how the City of New Orleans can insinuate itself into your very being and it has definitely got its hold on Ms. Reed. The verbal imagery made the pages come to life with descriptions of the colorful characters who populate Ms. Reed's and husband John's life and for most of the book, their wonderful house.
Hurricane Katrina is the punctuation mark bracketed by both ends of the book, and Ms. Reed gives a resident's insight into how many homeowners in New Orleans lived through the hurricane, flood and its aftermath.
It's a quick read, but very satisfying. It will definitely make you hungry and yearn for the wonderful restaurants of New Orleans, as well as the colorful texture of its lifestyles and citizens.
More of a badly edited Foodie Book than a Katrina Story August 12, 2008
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
Julia Reed should have saved these New Orleans memoirs to use as cookbook filler and changed the name. There's more food, family, and friends mentioned in this book than there is storyline about the actual house on First Street and the Katrina aftermath. Reed was not really a victim of Katrina at all. Her house only suffered blown down trees and one broken window. She is, however, a victim of bad business decisions and the book suffers from poor editing.
The book starts off great with Reed telling back story about how she settled in New Orleans to report on governor Edwin Edwards, and lived in a quaint apartment off Bourbon. You really get a sense of the ambiance and decadence and drinks and food and people that make up the Big Easy. I was hooked right from the start!
At 42, she marries and buys her dream home in the garden district. But her husband has no voice in the novel. As a reader, you never get to know him. There is also an array of other friends and family members all over the map that just cloud the storyline because you can never keep any of them straight. It's like someone regurgitating a long phone conversation they just had with a distant relative and summarizing to get to the good parts.
The hurricane hits. Reed is tucked away safely at her parent's house and watching the chaos on television like everyone else. She uses her reporter status to get back into the city. After finding little damage done to her house, Reed spends the rest of the book telling you all the things she did for other people. Such as, she fed the Oklahoma National Guard on a daily basis and even ordered barbecue for 700 of them. Don't get me wrong, she definitely did some good things for people and I commend her for that. But maybe that could have been the focus of the book, instead of a house on First Street, which by now has long been forgotten back on page 20.
There are other tiny plot lines that offer up interest, but she never dives deep into them, such as "Here Lives Vera" or Ruthie the Duck Lady. So, the book ends up being a tangled grapevine of short stories and character sketches that leave you wanting more. The story of the self-appointed neighborhood watchman and his many "colorful" signs was the only Katrina survivor story which she spent a lot of worthwhile time on.
As for the house, Reed continues to shell out tons of money and put up with a bad contractor and poor workmanship. If I had to have someone repaint my bathroom three times or reinstall door knobs because they were upside down, I probably would have fired them. Instead, Reed even puts up with a homeless drugged-out workman who she is passionate about saving. She bails him out of jail and hires him a lawyer, and he still gets picked up for not paying his fines, leaving Reed to hold out money to pay his legal fees for him. Some people never learn...author included.
At 200 pages, this is a quick read and very humorous, but I often felt like a stranger at a party floating through a crowded room of people I don't know and only overhearing parts of their conversation, or like I was reading the diary of a food critic. Since Reed and the reader learn her house is okay very soon in the book, we spend most of the middle part of the book trying out all the restaurants as they begin to reopen. Po boys, watermelon pickles, lump crab, shrimp, grits, etouffee, bloody marys, oysters, remoulade, and meuniere clutter every page! I grew so tired of reading about all this food. All it did was make me hungry...for food and for structure to this book.
As for editing, by now you know this book is all over the place. At one point, Reed is planning a fundraiser, then spends a chapter telling you all about the political gossip of Edwards from 1991 out of nowhere (she'd already covered his storyline in the beginning), then it's Christmas and we are back in the house and bitching about leaks and stopped up sinks, then we're getting a dog. She spends all of 7 pages on Mardi Gras season, post-Katrina, and never really calls it that. She rides a float and hates the royalty balls. Too many story lines! Too many directions! Not enough focus! Did I mention that she bashes the mayor again and again, but never calls him by his name?? But has no qualms about naming the governor outright. I guess her editor was too busy snacking, as well, to catch these issues with this book.
I really really wanted to like this book and give it a generous 3 stars because Reed is indeed a good reporter and can make you laugh. However, I can only wonder what the original manuscript was like (it was on her laptop which was stolen when someone broke in). She should have taken that as here cue to just blog about New Orleans and her house, instead of publishing it.
Julia Reed is the Queen of New Orleans July 2, 2008
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
Julia Reed has done it again and its better than her first book, Queen of the Turtle Derby!! The House on First Street is not only about her colorful long suffering adventures at the hands of questionable home renovators but a wonderful love story about a city and its people. Warning, if you've been to New Orleans and loved every memory, you'll fall in love again by page eight.
Reed is a columnist for Vogue magazine and if you're a dedicated reader like me, you turn to articles written by her and Andre Leon Tally first. Evident in all of her works are unique observations of people mingled with a droll sense of humor. Think Eudora Welty mixed with Molly Irwin. Don't be fooled by the title since Reed provides remarkable insight to Southern views of life, religion, politics and food. Readers will learn how only in the South could there be a city like New Orleans.
Most interesting to me were her observations of New Orleans after Katrina and failed levees left most of the city underwater. No one is spared from her tart observations: well meaning and slightly misguided SPCA volunteers, confused and dazed officials from FEMA, supportive fly overs by President Bush and local politicians who worried more about how their hair looked on CNN than displaced residents. All are skewered in a wry manner that leaves you chuckling.
While Reed is honest about the losses and greed of others after the storm, she finds and tells you about the glimmers of hope from everyday people who are rebuilding the city. If after reading this book you don't want to go to New Orleans, eat some barbecued shrimp, drink beer out of the bottle, dance in the streets and sing Louis Armstrong songs then I don't what to tell ya! Buy it, be outraged, laugh out loud, make up a batch of gumbo and buy a ticket to New Orleans!
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