20 flavors of F--K Awful

1. I read Fifty Shades of Grey this year. It was not my idea.

2. There are 3 women, who all read this blog (I hope...), who early this year decided that they should simultaneously read Fifty Shades together, and I'm not completely sure why they did this, unless it was some sort of spiritual group punishment.  All three are very intelligent and well-read, and not surprisingly, they all hated it. And wanted somebody on this blog to read and review it.

3. Joe absolutely refused to read the book. In hindsight, this should be regarded as a smart move on Joe's part, and further proof that he is the brains of the blog. Don't ask what other body parts the rest of us represent.



4. Finally, an agreement was made: one of the women and I would do a book trade. I would read Fifty Shades, and she would read the complete comic-book series of Y: The Last Man. This worked out well, because the only reason for wanting us to read Grey was to get a man's opinion on what is a book painfully targeted towards women, and I have always been curious what a woman would think about Y, a relatively short series about a twenty-something guy who finds himself the last male living on earth, after a plague wipes out his half of the species. I should point out that Y does not take long to complete (only about 50 comics), so it was a fair trade.

5. Unfortunately, while I own the whole comic book series, I had to buy Grey, and it is on my nook right now. I should delete it, but strangely, I have kept it on there, almost as proof that I have read it, that I didn't just make this up, in case anybody asks.

6. Nobody has asked.

7. Okay, I won't wait any longer...Fifty Shades of Grey is a terrible book. Terrible, Horrible book.  And I could passively-aggressively say something like "but I'm not the target audience", and I'm not going to do that, because this is the type of book that, if I heard that you read this book, and liked it, truth be told, in my head, your IQ goes way down. That's the reality. This book is fuck-awful, infuriating and depressing in ways that I didn't think novels could be.

8. There is no plot. NO PLOT. The story of the book is that Anastasia Steele, recently graduated English major from a Washington University, meets Christian Grey, a millionare businessman in Seattle. Christian is wealthy, handsome, and charming in a way that only wealthy, handsome men can be. Anastasia is....more on that in a bit. Anyway, these two crazy kids meet and do not waste much time in consumating...and consumating...and...that's half the book, the revolution in and around the sexual encounters of these two. The only conflict comes from Christian's fondness of S&M, and his and Ana's continuing negotiations towards her becoming his submissive. Which is short-cutted by Christian's affection for Ana and his reluctance to completely immerse her in his sexual tastes. In the hands of a better writer, with an intent to portray an actual dominant-submissive relationship, this could be a terrific idea for a book. Hell, after reading Sabbath's Theater earlier this year, I think Philip Roth could write the shit out of a book like that, and it would be thought-provoking, and stomach-curdling in all the right ways. In E.L. James hands, it's literary porn, with the relationship just mind-numbing filler between increasingly sterile fuck-sessions.

9. Christian Grey is the most fleshed out character, which is my way of saying he's the only one I have a good feel for. He is your normal, romance novel, been with plenty of women but never been in love and has so much money but there is something missing from his life...yeah, I sound bitter, but that's only because I am. Truthfully, the book doesn't focus on his financial genius much, or any other part of his life that doesn't intersect with his feelings and relationship with Ana. And it's pretty obvious early that he is quite taken with Ana...and eager to immerse her in a world of straps, chains, and eating properly. Yes, that is a big deal with Christian. One of his pet-peeves, the basis of which is hinted at, but James barely cared enough to deal with it, so how am I supposed to care?

10. Anastasia is...a brunette. And an English major. Um, that's all I got. Don't look at me like that, that's seriously all I have; The book fucking falls over itself to not give too much insight into our heroine. Even with the book told from her point of view, the lack of information given is my largest and loudest complaint of Fifty Shades. Honestly, Shades starts with Ana graduating...and I don't even know what she wants to do with her degree until she starts going on job interviews 75% of the way through the book. All of the thoughts that she shares with the reader are stereotypical "I wish I was as beautiful/smart/confident as my roommate Kate", without any deeper thoughts. And I didn't need her to start wrestling with the inherent value of Victorian-era English romances in our modern world. I just was hoping for more brilliant thoughts than "Oh My!" or "UGH" or "Blerg" over and over...

11. My theory on why Anastasia is so woefully described, is that James didn't want to put too much of an idea into who Ana is, because she wanted to make Ana relate to every girl who read this, almost so that the reader could "imprint" themselves on her. Which, if true, is so fucking stupid I can't fucking breathe. Seriously, relatability is one of those things that you achieve by putting more into a character, not less. If you write the character well, people will find something in that person that speaks to them. Kids didn't pretend to be Princess Leia or Han Solo because George Lucas tried to keep them vague so as not to shut anybody out. (Granted, I always wanted to be Lando, but the point remains)

12. If James did not keep Ana vague on purpose....well, then she's just a shitty author, and that's not making the book sound any better, is it?

13. At a party recently, when I was bitching about Fifty Shades (And I will do that easily, with no hesitation. So keep that in mind if you want to talk about this with me), a person whose intelligence I highly respect asked if maybe James was making an artistic point by not telling any details on her main character. And that is an interesting point, and I can't say if she was or wasn't. What I can say, is that credit is not given, it's earned, and I find it difficult to believe a book with a dangerously thin-sliced plot and no real verve or skill at storytelling has such a high-minded concept behind it.

14. What? Oh, that. Yeah, everybody always asks how the sex scenes are. They're okay, I guess, if you can get past the idea that a 22 year-old virgin who has never even masturbated before can spontaneously, from day one, have 18 orgasms a day. Granted, apparently Christian is packing quite the financial portfolio, if you know what I'm saying.

15. That means his penis. He has a large penis. Sorry, I'm not good at entendres, and you looked confused.

16. About the S&M...to use a baseball term, SWING AND A MISS. That could have been the one interesting tact Shades could take, by accurately portraying a dominant-submissive relationship, and how somebody who has no idea about that lifestyle struggles with trying it for somebody she loves. And the author wimps out completely. Again, probably because it would have "offended" too many people. Christian says from the beginning that he wants Ana to be his submissive, and he is a very controlling person, even tries to make her sign a contract...but she never signs, and he starts to change and be satisfied with regular old boring sex, ostensibly because he loves her. They explore the outer fringes of S&M, but nothing really interesting, and at the end of the book, when she forces him to spank her violently, I guess to see if she can do it, she hates the act and breaks up with him. And that's how Fifty Shades ends. Bullshit. BULLSHIT. The whole point of Shades, the only real plot given is whether Ana can attempt Christian's sexual lifestyle, and all I got out of it was that Christian really loves Ana and starts to change and this freaks Ana out so much that she manufactures a way to break up with it being his fault. This fucking book, you guys.

17. I hate this book.

18. Really fucking hate it.

19. In case you are interested, my partner in the book trade was much warmer towards Y:The Last Man. She had her issues, mostly with how the "last man" reacts to his situation, which I did not really have a problem with, and how the artists visually portrayed the females in the comic, a complaint I freely admit is valid. But she seemed to like the story, and proclaimed it "so much better" than Fifty Shades.

20. I think that means I win.