Fifty Shades of Grey

More like Fifty Shades of wasting my time…

Quickly lets give a little info on the book: Fifty Shades of Grey is a 2011 erotic romance by British author E. L. James. Set largely in Seattle, it is the first installment in a trilogy that traces the deepening relationship between a college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and a young business magnate, Christian Grey. It is notable for its explicitly erotic scenes featuring elements of sexual practices involving bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, and sadism/masochism (BDSM).

My thoughts on the book in a nutshell: Twilight for grown-ups…

The protagonist Anastasia Steele is no different than the famous Bella Swan of Twilight trilogies but instead of keeping friends with vampires and werewolves she lives in a more realistic world and keeps company of a seriously disturbed man Christian Grey, who has to go all the trouble with making women sign a NDA before engaging in sexual intercourse with them.

Wanna go kinky boy? Put those papers down and go kinky!

It is the same washed up, tiresome story about a clumsy, slightly idiotic woman meeting her better, mysteriously-dangerous-to-an-acceptable-degree man. Supposedly she sees herself as nothing special, the narration describes her as nothing special and yet the superior guy sees her from a different angle and goes nuts over her. They make a perfect couple. One is completely devoid of self-reliance whereas the other relies on people to rely on them.

I suppose it appeals to the women out there who see themselves as nothing special and they wait for their Christian NDAnuts and Edward Whitefangs to save them from their mundane lives.

Cant really blame them on the one hand. In every woman there is a little voice that keeps saying: “Oh he will take care of me and worry over me. When I kick him out of the door he will come back from the window. He is my superior, I adore him and for some dumb reason he adores me although I am nothing special.” That voice must be killed…I murdered mine with a fire-poker! Daddy issues? No thanks!

 Funny how I heard that a housewife of 15 years of marriage left her home after reading the book claiming: “There is more to life!”. Have you ever tried BDSM sweetheart? Because it hurts. Books are for reading, lives are for living. Some books are less worth reading though…

And yet people kept mistaking me as they always do when I finish a book way too quickly! “Oh you must have liked it a lot.” Once again: No I did not like it, if I did like it, I would have savored every page, soaking in philosophical debates, putting the book down for long periods of time to think on it and maybe even take notes on the ideas it offers and sometimes even go through revelations. If you see me finish a book in 1day-1week that means I do not value it, if you see me read it for at least a month that means I like it so much that I do not wish to finish it.

I did take notes on this book though. Some of the positions mentioned were definitely interesting to carry into my private life with my husband. And the only revelation it offered was: “Best Seller” means something else to the popular culture than it does to me.

Still I love when I am proven right. I kept saying that it was twilight for grown-ups and incidentally when I was doing a small research to write this post I came across this tiny little bit of information on the internet about how it was written by E.L. James firstly as a fan-base work of twilight. Oh I just knew it!

Apparently Stephanie Meyer refuses to relate any of E.L. James’ book to herself even as inspiration. I suppose it gets her down to think how lousy her (and by that I mean both authors) characters are when subjected to a real world setting. Well on the bright side Twilight Series were at least meant for a much younger audience than Fifty Shades series and this by all means is the only reason why it escapes my wrath. Much like Harry friggin' Potter series whose surname I suspect comes from the fact that he does a lot of pot hence imagines all his adventures...

I am not saying that one should not read love stories or get gooey and romantic. But do you want to read a real love story full of torment, written in the right way with full profiles of complex characters that go beyond their times hence being rendered immortal? Read Wuthering Heights, read Anna Karenina, read Madame Bovary, read Mrs Dalloway…

But don’t read this pop-corn and then claim it to be a great book. If books of the classic literature are the equivalents of FIPRESCI award winning movies then books like Fifty Shades are the equivalents of American Cheerleader comedies with Rob Schneider starring in them. They will show you a nice time but if you try to take them seriously people of intellect will simply laugh at you.