February Reading

I just realized with shock and horror that I forgot to do a post on my February reading.

And I just know you are all on tenterhooks wondering about what I read and what I thought of it.

So here it is ... February:

A Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
Blah. I was not a huge fan of this book.
I was asked to read it by a friend who had intended to include it in book club. She had heard that the book might offend some and she wanted me to read it to see if it would.
I would not say that the book offended me, per se. But I am pretty liberal on those points. The vulgarity just had no meaning or sense in the book. It was as if it existed in the book merely to give some thrill to the author -- lending nothing to the plot or characters. And in that sense it distracted and offended me.
The narrator, a largely overweight man who tells his tale as rides his bike across the country when hit with severe family tragedy, skipped around too much. He had too many unfinished thoughts and sentences. His character was too boorish, too docile and too scatter-brained to be of interest for 384 pages.
In the end, I say it was an OK book because the beginning and end were pretty good and poignant. It's just the middle 320 pages I can do without.

Juliet by Anne Fortier
I really, really, really loved this book. Like, a lot.
I am a huge fan of historical fiction and this book seems to lend itself to that genre, although Romeo and Juliet is not a true historical event (or is it? This is what the book explores, (in a complete fictional setting, of course) the truth behind Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet).
It was well written and flowed easily, even though it jumped time periods, which can give me headaches, although Fortier does it seamlessly.
A good romance, mystery and history all rolled up into one.
Best three days reading I spent the entire month.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
I will admit it: I have not finished this book.
I can't.
Every single time I sit down to read it, I fall asleep within 4 pages.
I have tried. Really, I have. And I will continue to try. But it's too confusing and too boring for me.
I like to think of myself as a semi-intelligent person (that's me falsely inflating my own ego), but I have very little idea of what he is talking about in this book.
Could it be my pregnancy? Or is 90ish pages not enough to really be IN the book?
Whatever it is, I had high hopes for Brown, since I loved his The DaVinci Code.
I will now struggle through this book for the rest of the year to reach my 52-book goal. That, or I'll throw in the towel mid-October and pick up and easy-breezy read to piggy-back on a week.

Are Men Necessary?:When Sexes Collide by Maureen Dowd
Dowd writes this non-fiction, essay-style book fairly well and I would say it was a good book.
She looks at the history of women and each chapter reads like humorous essays about the sexes.
So it's not that I had a hard time reading this book, it's just that she didn't stick to her point. She never answered the question. It didn't even seem to me that she was on topic by the end of the book.
Don't get me wrong, every chapter flows from one to the other and I never felt like she picked up and left me hanging at any point in the book, it was just the realization toward the end of the book that she was nowhere near her beginning.

So there it is.

Hopefully March gives me better fodder. So far, it's pretty decent.