50 Shades of STFU

Any regular reader of this blog will immediately notice something is amiss in this post.  It actually has capitalization!! That's right.  For one post a week you will be treated to correct punctuation, capitalization, and probably some complete sentences! Probably not as many pictures though since that requires more work. 

All joking aside, thank you Shannon for allowing me to post here.  I know this is your baby and I will try not to embarrass you too much.  But onto the post...

So I just finished the second book of the series Fifty Shades by EL James.  If you don't know what that is then you have to live in a cave in the arctic.  Or somewhere similarly remote, like North Dakota.  And if you haven't read it, and intend to do so, this post will involve spoilers.  It may also convince you not to read it.  In any case, I will warn you before I get to that section.  I promise. 

As Shannon has posted, we recently took a trip to Cancun.  We stayed at the awesome Secrets Maroma Beach (hopefully that link works) and had a great time, but I'll let Shannon illuminate you on that topic.  Obviously most of the day involved sitting around the beach or pool and eating, drinking, or reading.  The most popular books being read were overwhelmingly Fifty Shades of one book or another.  It's not a stretch to say 1 in 5 occupied chairs had folks reading them.  And everybody was talking about it too.  You would have thought we were at some fetish party.  I'm sure it got a lot of people in the mood and I think this ecard explains it:

Shannon had started reading them before we left and finished within the first few days of being there, I believe.  I had intended to read them, but I had a bunch of other books that were higher on my priority list, but I could not join in on any conversations that involved the book so I bit the bullet and started reading them.  After reading two of the books in the trilogy I have no idea why anyone would read these on purpose.  I read the first one and it was OK, and Shannon had said she liked the second one the best, so I pushed through that one as well.  But it was painful.  So I'm going to go into the specifics to the best of my ability.

SPOILER ALERT!
You've been warned.

To anyone that has read them I apologize, but I'm going to give a brief background.  The story involves Anastasia Steele and how she meets this sexy millionaire, Christian Gray, and they feel an instant connection and then she finds out he's a self-loathing, narcissistic (I know that's kind of contradictory), sadistic, dominant who is "fifty shades of f***ed up" and how the relationship goes from there.  And they have sex.  The end.  God I hate Ana.  I don't know if I can figure out the right adjective to describe her, but I'll start with mewling, whiny (fairly similar adjectives I know), shallow, needy, and indecisive.  She loves him, she hates him, she feels sorry for him, she feels sorry for herself.  She likes spanking, she doesn't like it.  She's going to stay with him forever, he's messed up and she's going to leave him.  Nothing he could say to her would make her leave him, whoa, I'm leaving him.  She likes being submissive, but she likes sticking up to him.  She is just as messed up as he is, just in another fashion. 

So help me god, if I every hear anyone say anything about their "inner goddess" or their "subconscious" I am going to punch them in the face.  And James needs to get a thesaurus.  For crying out loud it's free online.  You would think with the amount of sex involved in this book she could find new versions for "my sex" and "down there".  It's like an 8th grader wrote parts of this book.  Actually she had a thesaurus, she just used it in the wrong places.  She used it to write Christian said something "phlegmatically", but not when she talked about his "mercurial" mood swings.  What other words/phrases did I have to read far too many times? How about: murmured, breathless, things about his long fingers, how beautiful and sexy he is, how she bites her lower lip, and how is eyes are gray (I caught onto that after the first time she told me.  I didn't need the other 40 reminders).  I was also annoyed by the descriptions of the opening of condoms.  Who cares? If it wasn't for the rest of the subject matter I would have thought it was propaganda for a safe sex program.  I think Ana blushes in the first book about 57 times.  She should have exploded into flames at that rate.  How many times did the word "f***",with or without the word "holy" in front of it, appear in this book? I'm sure somebody out there counted, but I don't even care enough to google it.  I guess the good news is I've been desensitized and now the word has about as much impact as the word "table".  And how many times can you actually have sex back to back?! I mean seriously? I guess it's a good thing he recharges quickly because he lasts about a minute each time. 

I can't tell you how many times I rolled my eyes at this book (a recurring theme throughout the book btw). Some of the lines were so damned corny.  I can't remember the exact line, but Christian made some inane comment like, "I have to use the phone," and she says to herself, "Holy sh**! He's so f***ing hot when he says that". I get twitchy palms when I think about the garbage the author put on paper and is now worth an estimated $15 million. 

END SPOILER

OK rant over.  Needless to say I'm not going to read the third book.  I told Shannon she could just give me the Cliff's notes version and her response was, "they have sex." I laughed out loud at work when she texted that back to me.  How droll. 

Well thanks for reading my Fifty Shades bashing.  I promise I'm not normally a hateful and angry person.  I'm usually quite fun-loving and genial, but these books are a blight upon the nation.  I like the subject matter, but hated the story and the characters.  I'm sure there are other books out there that have a similar topic done right.  Shannon has mentioned some Anne Rice books, actually she wrote them under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure, but I've not had the pleasure of tackling those yet.  Until next time.

Laters.