I finally did it. I caved.
I downloaded the ubiquitous “50 shades of Grey”. I wanted to see if it lived up to the hype. I’ve heard the media rave about this racy trilogy. To be honest, I found it completely unbelievable and ridiculous.
Not because it’s written from the point of view of Anastasia Steele, 24-year-old virgin who falls for Christian Grey, a 27-year-old self-made gazillionaire who owns a corporate dynasty while also learning to pilot helicopters and who has a penchant for the BDSM lifestyle (Google it if you don’t know what ‘m talking about)
Not because it is basically Twilight, with Subs and Doms instead of vampires and werewolves….
Not because it reads as if written by a high school girl, with a few big words thrown in here and there, meant to impress: yet falls short of the mark. It’s badly edited and the cadence often feels rushed. The characters are rather one-dimensional, and if I never the words “mercurial” or “inner-goddess” again I’ll be grateful.
It’s mommy porn. A guilty pleasure. A Harlequin romance novel on steroids.
But this is not why I find Fifty Shades of Grey unbelievable.
The reason I find it completely unbelievable is because we are to believe that the heroine of the story, Anastasia was able to make it through college at WSU in Vancouver, Washington without a laptop or a cell phone…. really? What parent in 2011 sends their child away to college without a laptop? or a cell phone? Completely unfathomable. In fact, a recent study points to full time college students owning both a laptop and a cell phone, with 35% of college students owning 2 laptops. So when Christian Grey gifts Anastasia Steele with her first laptop and her first cell phone, I found the rest of the novel impossible to read. I don’t care how steamy it is or how dreamy they are.
As an added treat, I give you Ellen DeGeneres reading 50 Shades of Grey:
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Mommy-Come-Lately 
I stopped at the first 50 pages of the book.
When I was in provincial New Zealand in the 80’s there was a local ‘New Romantic’ Pub band called ‘Shades of Grey’. They would all be about 50 now. I’m not making that up, thats pretty spooky! Oh and I have no interest in reading the book either. I like Ellen’s take on it. That’ll do me
I believe this book started out as Twilight fan fiction? That, to me, is extremely off-putting. I feel like I need to read the book because the hype is so massive, yet I’m loathed to actually spend the money. Quite the dilemma.
Sorry, I will have to disagree with your opinion, but we are allowed to have differences of opinion, aren’t we? And even though it DID start as a Twilight fan-fic, it is NOT Twilight with doms and subs-that is a completely off-base generalization.
Jill…. Both have young inexperienced women as the subject. Both are attracted to older men That are ridiculously rich and over-protective…. Both men like to watch their GFs sleep…. Both have a secret that society wouldn’t approve of or understand, causing the females to lie and keep secrets from their friends/families…. Both men are afraid that, if they really let themselves let loose of their primal desires, they will ultimately harm the women they love….
Still feel these are generalizations that could apply to a number of romance novels.
Fair enough… 😛
The Ellen video was very entertaining… someone asked what the big deal with this book was… I guess it’s not so big of a deal. Thanks for posting. Especially Ellen’s Video! It made me laugh out loud for real.
P.S. Thanks for the invite to check your site out.
Anastasia Steele is supposed to be a complete ingénue, Beth, but you’re absolutely right – yet another layer of unbelievability that I’m ashamed to say I never noticed. The only good thing you can say about Fifty Shades is that it’s spawned some hilarious blog-posts, yours among them. What does BDSM stand for, by the way? I’ve always been too embarrassed to ask.