“The book everybody is talking about!” says the sign in EVERY BOOKSTORE IN THE WORLD right now. That book is “Fifty Shades Of Grey”, the breakaway erotic literary hit of the year by first time author E.L. James. Dubbed “mommy porn” much of the book’s content surrounds (SPOILER ALERT) a BDSM relationship. I know because I read “Fifty Shades” for my Book Club. Here are 10 things I learned from reading it…
1. It’s the 21st Century and authors are still using the Edwardian-porn euphemism “my sex” as a noun for vagina.
2. It’s a good story told from one perspective – that of Anastasia Steele the protagonist and narrator – with lots of suspense and mystery surrounding the partial-to-spanking object of her affection Christian Grey (yep that’s a clever call back to the book’s title), as well as a lot of detailed S&M sex.
3. The book is not well written at all. Subtlety is an area of weakness for the writer. The tone of the prose is very run of the Mills & Boon, except it’s in first person including a lot of stream-of-consciousness commentary by Anastasia’s inner monologue. It genuinely feels as though the book has not been looked over by an editor (which may very well be true) because some of the sentences and descriptions in the book are actually embarrassingly terrible. I can’t figure out if E.L. James meant for Anastasia to be a bit of an idiot or if E.L. James is a bit of an idiot. Excerpt:
His voice is warm and husky like dark melted chocolate fudge caramel… or something.
E.L. needs to work on those similes. That is literally an unedited line from the novel. Another excerpt:
Holy Crap! He’s wearing a white shirt, open at the collar, and grey flannel pants that hang from his hips. His unruly hair is still damp from a shower. My mouth goes dry looking at him. He’s so freaking hot.
As you can see Anastasia speaks like a fucking idiot, which is unfortunate because it’s a distraction that takes away from the good stuff in the book – like the S&M sex parts.
4. Reading about S&M sex gets me a little squirrelly in the pants :/
5. But, to be honest, you’ve read one S&M sex scene you’ve read ’em all.
6. Anastasia is a wet blanket. It’s hard to root for a heroine who thinks and acts like an first class lame-o. For example, Anastasia is so easily shocked (when Christian whips out his steaming shlong, for example), and constantly exclaims Oh my! to herself. And she refers to condoms as ‘foil packets’ all the time. Mate, your boning a dude while shackled to a wooden rack with a gag in your mouth, I think you can drop the act and call a condom a fucking condom.
Excerpts (NSFW):
Christian squirts baby oil into his hand and then rubs my behind with careful tenderness-from makeup remover to soothing balm for a spanked ass, who would have thought it was such a versatile liquid.
And:
“I pull him deeper into my mouth so I can feel him at the back of my throat and then to the front again. My tongue swirls around the end. He’s my very own Christian Grey-flavored popsicle. I suck harder and harder … Hmm … My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves.”
7. Status updates of your inner goddess don’t belong anywhere in a book but especially not in a blowjob scene.
8. In books you can go from being a virgin to “climaxing” by penetration several times in 10 minutes in a matter of days. Good grief.
9. Anastasia’s slutty booze hag room mate Kate Kavanagh is the only vaguely relatable character in the book and she seems like a self-centred bitch.
10. I’m definitely going to read the sequel “Fifty Shades Darker” when it is released because I want to know what happens next despite all of the above. I’m happy to give away my copy of “Fifty Shades Of Grey” to a keen reader. Just go to the comment section and tell me why you want it.
