The Sharper Your Knives, The Less You Cry by Kathleen Finn

This memoir claims to be about chronicles the author’s journey to fulfill her dream of attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, the world’s most famous cooking school. Unfortunately, to my ear, it isn't so much about that as it was about her personal life, which included not being happy in her job, struggling with intimacy, and not being able to relax and enjoy living in a foreign country where she did not speak the language. She also went to Le Cordon Bleu, but other than a recipe at the end of each chapter, there really isn't much in the way of details or reflection on that experience. That disappointed me because while I do not share the dream of attending cooking school in Paris, I did pick up the book to figure out what that was all about. I did pretty quickly figure out that this would not go on to my bucket list of things to do--I was pretty sure it wouldn't, because while I would love to live in France, I do not want to live in Paris, and cooking school would be enough of a struggle for me, I would want that to be in English. The only thing that surprised me from this is that there is a translator, so you can actually do it as a non-French speaker--no, that did not change my already made up mind. The parts of this book that are not about cooking were, for me, unsatisfying, a little melodramatic, and a lot like things I do not relate to and don't need to dig further into. So on the whole, I would not recommend this.