Give a Girl a Knife was another case of a reading a book that I wanted to love but ended up only sort of liking.  I swear I am not that picky! I loved the topics she covered–her weird rural no-electricity-no-water-homesteader-to-the-extreme life and her NYC fancy restaurant life (obvi, I’m a food blogger) but timeline was so jumbled I can’t give it more than three stars out of five.

It starts out in NYC with the author working in fancy restaurants with glimpses back to her rural MN homesteader days. Then halfway through, it goes back in time to her childhood then thoroughly explores her younger days in rural MN prior to the move to NYC. It was a really poor editing choice. I guess the NYC stuff was “flashier” so they stuck that in the front but really, if they wanted to include long narratives about rural life anyway, writing the book chronologically (it is a memoir, after all) would make so much more sense.

Also, after reading the book I googled her and it seems that Amy Thielen is rather well-known and had her own TV show but being a non-cable subscriber who has seen nearly no food shows (besides Chopped, which always seems to be on when I am alone in a hotel room) I had no idea. I think if I was a fan of hers I would been even more annoyed by the time jumping–she seems to focus on Midwestern cooking so I would think that would be all the more reason to start with the Midwest aspect.