Merrill Markoe's Guide to Love

Merrill Markoe goes on a journey of discovery to see if she can figure out how to improve one's love life. She goes to the places and takes the classes that others might be too fearful, embarrassed or frugal to do. She takes the weird classes,  including one where the attendees are given instruction on how to perform oral sex on men, visits psychics, attends meetings purporting to have the secrets that will assure success in the mating game. She meets some pretty iffy types but uses her friends for moral support as she talks them into attending many of these functions with her. She must be a pretty brave woman, in my opinion. She is also pretty funny and so is her book: not only funny but actually informative too.

Walking in Circles before Lying Down

By Merrill Markoe

Dawn has so far not exactly made a success of her life. She works at a doggy-daycare and does dog-walking on the side. And no one in her life is giving her much encouragment and support, not her parents (divorced), not her sister, and not her boyfriend. Especially not her boyfriend, who has announced that he is leaving her because he has fallen in love with someone else. And that is when Dawn started hearing her dog and all dogs talk.
Is she losing her mind? Has she been blessed by the dog fairy? Well, it really doesn't matter, because even though it may seem she is losing her grip, Dawn is finally starting to take charge of her own life.

This is kind of your typical "chick lit:" girl falls for bad guy, bad guy breaks her heart and her life goes to hell, then girl begins to face reality, meet sweet new guy, and get her life back on track. Yay, girl power!
But what makes this story a little better is the talking to dogs. The dogs are funny and cool and wise (maybe too wise) and very doggy. These dogs say things that you could really think dogs would say. If they could talk. Which they can't. But if they could they would talk like the dogs in this story. The conversations between Dawn and the dogs are the best and most entertaining part. They take just another boring chick lit novel to a whole better and funnier level.

It's My F---ing Birthday

By Merrill Markoe

Told in first person by the unnamed narrator who writes a sort of memorandum to herself about the events of the past year, starting with her 36th birthday and concluding with her 42nd. In the first chapter, she writes that she is still grieving over her break-up a year ago with long-time boyfriend Carl. Oddly, Carl sends her a huge bouquet of flowers with a card signed only, "Happy Birthday Carl" with no punctuation between birthday and Carl. She doesn't know what to make of this and it just brings out her bad feelings again. Meanwhile, her parents are there to take her out for her annual birthday dinner, an event she doesn't like and dreads every year. Her relationship with her parents is rather rocky: her mother constantly criticizes her and her father is a conceited bore and a bully.
She concludes each chapter with a review of what she learned that year and also what she hopes to learn and in the first chapter she claims she wants to learn more about quantum physics but by the last chapter she gives up on quantum physics with a quote from Richard Feynman: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."

I enjoyed this book although I found it hard to understand the main character's reluctance to stand up to her emotionally abusive parents. I should think that by the time one is 36, one would be able to tell the parents where to get off.
So the main character is a bit of a pushover but despite that, her story was interesting and a little bit amusing and, while not a real engrossing book, still made for a pretty good read.