The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry by Kathleen Flynn

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

I was really excited to read this book, but the reading of it didn't live up to my expectations. The author writes the story of how she suddenly decides to live in Paris and go to cooking school. But to my analytic brain, she didn't even say how she financed her year. I'm sure many of us have a wild idea of doing something similar, but a little help in the direction of how she achieved her dream may help others achieve theirs. 

I thought it was a great title for a book, and it did make me want to read it.

The book is punctuated with recipes, but it was interesting to note in book club that no one had even tried one of the recipes. With much good intention, I did plan on it, but somehow never got round to doing so. 

The book is compared with Eat, Pray Love, but I enjoyed that book much more. I think if I did it again in a book club, I would end with an evening of cooking one of the recipes together. 

Moloka'i by Alan Brennert

Moloka'i

Moloka'i takes place in the Leper colony in the Hawaiian Islands. Although the book is officially fiction, the events that happen in the book are true. It is the story of one young girl who contracts the disease and is sent away from her family to live on the colony with other lepers. The book is well researched and very moving in its depiction of life in the leper colony on Moloka'i.

Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz

Drowning Ruth: A Novel (Oprah's Book Club)

The way this book is written is unusual. It jumps about backward and forward in time, sometimes from one page to the next. But somehow it works and that added to the joy of reading the book. I wouldn't, however, have liked to have listened to this on CD, I think that would have made it confusing.

The mystery is around the fact that Ruth remembers drowning, although obviously she didn't actually drown. You don't find out what actually happened until the end of the book. The book is easy to read and difficult to put down. Personally I reached the middle and finished it in one day even though I had other things to do.

It is an Oprah Book Club choice and I find many of these have some form of sexual abuse in them. I'd just like to say that this one didn't. The characters were a little unusual, but just enough to make them interesting to read about and discuss in a book club setting.