Well,
people; never say I’m not one to jump on a bandwagon. Because I am.
Although I often do it unwittingly. Which makes me think I’m just really
in touch
with the masses quite psychically. I'm not even trying! Or maybe I'm a
follower. Who knows and who cares right? (I'm not a follower damn you!)
What I'm trying to get at is that I have read ALL THREE 50 shades books. But when I started, I'd never heard of them. I was tricked!
But what are these books I hear you cry!
Well...do you remember when I wrote a
blog about twilight? I read all the books and wrote a very angry
blog about how much I hated all the characters and the plot and how I
had done nothing but read them for 2 weeks and was obsessed, but that I
categorically HATED them. Well it's like that.
On acid. And with porn.
The
50 shades trilogy is a set of books that have taken the world by storm.
The Scottish author used to write a blog which was twilight fan fic.
Fan fic being
the literary equivalent of dragons and swords type role play in the
forest. You take a book you love and you write stories with the same
themes and characters and stuff. So the author was writing this blog and
it got really popular and then it got published
as an E book and then it got published as a book and everyone all over
the world is reading it and it tops all the best seller lists and
they're making a film of it.
So what's good about it?
Well
I really enjoy the twilight refs. Which is wierd seeing as I hated
twilight. Or did I? I can't decide. I defo hated the main characters.
Twilight
is about Edward and Bella. Bella is a self sacrificing goody goody and
she falls in love with Edward who is a broody mysterious vampire type
person
who is really controlling and always fretting for bella’s safety.
They live in Washington state.
Their love knows no bounds.
In
50 shades the main character, Anastasia is a self sacrificing goody
goody who falls in love with Christian who is a brooding, mysterious
sexy freaky sadism
and masochism sex addict who is really controlling and frets about
Anastasia’s safety.
They live in Washington state.
Their love knows no bounds.
Brilliant!
The making him a controlling fucked up bondage weirdo is great and I feel like the book kind of makes fun of itself in this way.
Just about.
And that's it!
There's NOTHING else to like.
The
first thing that hit me straight away was how awkward the writing was.
It reminded me of something. I quickly realised that it reminded me of
my own writing
as a teenager when I was really into sweet valley high and I wrote all
my stories about teenagers in high school living in California. My own
fan fic I suppose. Anyways, as a middle class English girl, I knew all
the right language to use to make it Americanised,
but it didn’t sound quite right. Like I could hear my own English
accent saying the words. That's how I felt about 50 shades. Yeah she
says “beet” instead of beetroot but I can hear it feels fake. Also, she
makes loads of mistakes and says she's going out
to get “trashed” and reaches for the “duvet”. COME ON DO YOUR
RESEARCH!.
The
dialogue is really clunky too. The main characters contstantly call each other "Mr Grey" and "Ms Steele". Ok maybe in real life you might have an in joke and do it occaisionally. But not ALL the time!
So the
couple embark on this weirdo relationship where he wants to spank her
all the time and she likes it, kind of and they have sex ALL THE TIME.
She gives him
a Blow Jay and 2 seconds later he flips her over and takes her roughly
from behind. Then they go and have breakfast and have sex on the
breakfast bar and then they go out on the boat and have sex in the cabin
and then they go home and have sex in a car park
and then they have sex in is kinky playroom and then sex again in the
middle of the night when someone needs a wee. RIDICULOUS. Is he a sex
superhero?
Before
Anastasia meets MR CHRISTIAN GREY in his POWERFUL OFFICE, she is a shy,
clumsy dork with bad dress sense and no money and she's a virgin who’s
only had
2 snogs and apparently NEVER pleasured herself either. And she's 22.
Yeah right. Anyways....she transforms into an assertive, sexily dressed
and confident wonder woman by the 3rd book (another good
twilight link really, cos in twilight bella becomes
a vampire and becomes really strong but enough about that). But along
the way she has a sexual awakening and we’re party to EVERY thought she
has. Every time any man looks her at her she blushes. If I had a drink,
at one twitter friend’s suggestion, every
time she “blushes furiously” or a slow blush creeps across her face,
I'd have been trashed for the whole 2 weeks. She also says “oh my” a
lot. Every time they do ANYTHING sexy she says to herself "oh my". In italics.What a loser.
This
is one of the author’s greatest flaws. Repetition (says me who says
anyways 15 times per blog..but...anyways). She's so bad for it. Ana
constantly is blushing,
saying oh my and biting her lip. Christian’s eyes are constantly
darkening. She’ll use the same word three times in a sentence and she
even repeats sentences.
It
makes me think that she took the blog...used the find command on word
and changed the names and then just published it. Without checking the
writing or seeing
if it flowed well. It has the feel of a book that was published in a
rush because the author died and the family won't let the editors change
a thing (hello girl with the dragon tattoo books, I'm talking to you).
But
what about Christian? He's a massive fucking bastard who likes to hurt
women. And control then and tell them what to eat and what to say and
how to say
it. If he asks Ana to do something and she says no I don’t want to, he
tells her he wants to beat the shit out of her. If she forgets to eat
lunch, he tells her she must obey him.
What
gets me the most about this book is that all over the internet you hear
that it’s a feminist book. That it’s empowering to women. What? Because
it has
a lot of sex in it? So what. So does porn but that's not empowering. So
some dork is having loads of rampant sex? I don’t give a shit. Because
this book is actually promoting obeying your man. Sure sure, in the 3rd
book SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
they get married and there's a small reference to the fact that she
says she won't obey him in the vows. It’s so inconsequential because she
DOES obey him all the time. She rebels every now and then but she moves
in with him. She marries him after only a month
of going out. And she wears all the clothes he buys for her, and eats the food he makes
her eat. He BUYS the company she works for so he can give her an undeserved promotion and she
goes along with after a small fight. He MAKES her change her name to
his even though she doesn’t want to. He fucking
BEATS her for fun. This book is anti feminist it’s just unreal. I can't
understand how anyone can say it’s empowering. And the fact that anyone
could find the book arousing and sexy and an escape from their daily
grind makes me so confused. I was hysterically
laughing at the sex scenes at first. Then I would read them stony faced
and bored and eventually I just skipped them all. It’s too much, man. They're badly written and laughable, with stupid language like
“he touched me..there!” and “I exploded around
him into a million pieces just as he found his own release”. Just say
you both came OK?
But
worse of all..the worst possible crime is that Ana calls her vagina her
“sex”. And I just can't get past that. No matter what you say.
