Fleming

First the good news: the narrator of The Sharper Your Knife... is excellent. An hour into the book I checked to see if she was the author. Unfortunately not. Without her I would have given up on the book half way through. So much for the good news.
Here is a book about a woman spending a lot of money and a little time to fufill her dream. Her dream seems to be not to cook or to learn to cook but to go to cooking school or maybe to write about going to cooking school. She attends the Cordon Bleu in Paris. She recounts ALL of her experiences with the school and the new culture and comes away with the profound insights of any high school foreign exchange student. The book is too long and in the left me asking why I should care about this story of someone I've never heard of who only has cliche emotional lessons learned. The writing is competent but often corny and unremarkable.

Tina Fey is smart, aware and outrageously funny. Her book matches these qualities. Great audio version.

Typical Hornby subject matter: pop culture, emotionally immature men, longing women, confused children. Yet also typical Hornby approach to his subjects, bringing humor, compassion and deep insight into his characters lives and interests. I loved it. The multiple readers were spot on. Bill Irwin was fantastic. It should win an Emmy.

I purchased the print copy of this book a few months ago and never got around to reading it until one day I opened it up randomly and dove in. It made me spill my milk. The book is comic brillance. Audio version is a treat as well with the author's sardonic delivery. I would much rather spend an evening with John Hodgman, or this audio book, than any of the people who couldn't find the humor in it.