Reading Lolita in Tehran

I'm not an Iranian woman. And as I finished Reading Lolita in Tehran, I decided that I'm glad to be an American man.  Not because of the hardships that Azar Nafisi details for Iranian women during the time of her story, but because my absence of firsthand knowledge of their hardships and experience is the only thing that sustained me through Nafisi's "Memoir in Books."

This is the second book I've read this year that included a "Reading Group Guide."  Both books left me unsatisfied, so maybe the idea is that a book group is necessary to make these books fulfilling.  Or maybe I'm just not the writers' target audience.

In any case, Reading Lolita in Tehran isn't bad, but it's not good - same goes for the other "book club" novel I read.  The subject captivated me, and I enjoyed how the works of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen played into the story.  But the narrative and the narrator both made me want to put the book down at times.