I've now finished reading \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" by EL James. As everyone on the planet likely knows by now, Grey is a trilogy and \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" is part 1. The books have received everything from lavish praise and adulation, to a life-changing movie deal for the author, to scorn and demeaning comments for the writer and the book's fans. I must've been fated to read it because I was still mulling over whether the books were worth the investment when my eldest bought me Fifty Shades in paper for Mother's Day.<\/p>\n
And no, there was nothing weird about the gift. Zack had\u00a0heard me mention it and recalled my saying\u00a0that it was written as a tribute to Twilight. Zack's a big Twilight fan, and he knows I like tribute books (mine - Dangerous Relations: Griffin's Law<\/a><\/em> is my nod to Grey's Anatomy).\u00a0 So, being a thoughtful child, he picked up this one for me.<\/p>\n Here it sat, in my house as a gift for Mother's Day.\u00a0 I hadn't decided whether to take the plunge and buy it - and this is where I have a confession to make - I'm not an erotica reader. My first acquaintance with the genre came with my first ebook publishing venture -\u00a0 way back before Amazon built\u00a0 the Kindle,\u00a0 when no one ever dreamed that books would be mainstream in any form but paper, there was a little company called Mobipocket.\u00a0 I first epublished there (later, Amazon bought Mobi and used the platform\/engine to build the Kindle). Erotica sold better on Mobi than anything else, so I'd occasionally peruse the covers. Floating torsos.\u00a0 Multiple torsos. The covers would show three or four men and one woman or sometimes several women and one man, and all of them would be naked and hovering.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ick.\u00a0 What that reminded me of was growing up in a little town called Hartsville, SC where there was one of\u00a0 THOSE drive-in\u00a0theaters.\u00a0 And sometimes, even respectable married ladies would venture in.\u00a0 My Mom and my aunt took me and my cousin a couple of times\u00a0as elementary school kids.\u00a0 They told us to sleep in the back seat, but as long as we were quiet, they weren't going to interrupt their guilty pleasure to\u00a0spank us for not sleeping.\u00a0 Invariably, in the movies someone would show up for their first day at a new job\u00a0and before they'd even filled out the tax forms, everyone in the office would be naked and going at it hard.\u00a0 Or someone would move into a new house and order a pizza but they'd end up with the delivery guy, the plumber and\u00a0welcome wagon ladies who brought a lot more than bundt cake.\u00a0 It sort of put me off the genre.\u00a0 As young marrieds, my hubby and I would sometimes rent one of those movies to enjoy together and as we wandered around the back section of the video store, I'd hand him a box and ask -- does this one look like it might have a plot?\u00a0 (In case you're wondering, the answer always turned out to be no).<\/p>\n I hadn't decided whether I wanted 5o Shades, but it seemed to want me.\u00a0 It's nice being wanted.\u00a0 Then I\u00a0started hearing\u00a0high and mighty PC types calling Fifty Shades - \"Mommy Porn.\"\u00a0\u00a0 Okay, if the PC crowd hated it, then I had to give it a try.\u00a0 At least there are\u00a0no floating torsos on the cover.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The\u00a0tale arises when good girl Ana Steele goes to Seattle to interview bad boy\u00a0billionaire Christian Grey as a favor to her roommate, Kate, who is ill.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Sparks fly fast and furiously from the instant of their first handshake and Christian's interest is sealed from the moment that virginal Ana asks him if he's gay.\u00a0\u00a0Ana leaves the interview thinking she'll return to her life and finish the preps for graduation before moving to Seattle with Kate and finding a job.\u00a0 Readers know that Ana won't get that wish because her life is about to become interesting.\u00a0 Christian pursues her with a single minded vengeance, trying to recruit her to become his newest submissive.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yes, Virginia, Christian is into S&M and only S&M based upon his seriously screwed up background.\u00a0 Ana's a virgin who has the good sense to be utterly appalled by the rules and contract Christian wants her to sign.\u00a0 I was beyond appalled by the rules and contract and that was before Christian showed Ana around his \"red room\" and introduced her to some of his turn - ons,\u00a0hitting\/spanking her,\u00a0binding her hands and feet and \"punishing\" her for her transgressions of disrespecting him or rolling her eyes at him.\u00a0 That's right.\u00a0 I said punishing her.\u00a0<\/p>\n By the end of part 1, I still hadn't decided if I adored Christian and forgave him for his\u00a0love of hitting women based on the fact that he was, as he told Ana - \"fifty shades of fucked up\"\u00a0or whether I deeply despised him for being unable to commit to a relationship that wasn't founded on his superiority and need to hit women.\u00a0 I think I adored and despised him in varying measures, depending on how the relationship was going at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n I hadn't decided whether I was going to buy book 2 or not as I neared the end of book 1. And I might not have picked up book 2, \"Fifty Shades Darker,\" except for the marketing genius of the publisher and\/or the author.\u00a0 See, book 1 ended with a break in the relationship and\u00a0readers of this blog know that I'm a deeply committed happily ever after kind of gal.\u00a0 I'd never have read book 1, Mother's Day gift or not, except that one of my co-workers (a fan of my writing and romance)\u00a0assured me that yes, there is a happy ending.\u00a0 So, I had no choice but to pick up Darker (this time for my Fire, of course).\u00a0 I have to chase the happy ending.<\/p>\n The fact that I picked up Darker even though I was ambivalent about the hero is also a tribute to the book's author, EL James.\u00a0 I've heard a lot of criticism\u00a0about the writing style of the author - one I still recall is the question:\u00a0 was this book written by a teenager.\u00a0 Yes, you'll fine no finely crafted prose that in and of itself makes you re-read a paragraph thinking, gosh that was well-written.\u00a0 However, Fifty Shades is a good story and it works because the author knows how to tell a story.\u00a0 At the core level, that's the test of whether or not a writer will suceed in a career as an author.\u00a0 It doesn't matter whether their style is spare or wordy. It matters whether they know how to tell\u00a0 story in a way that takes the reader along for the journey and Ms. James did just that for me.<\/p>\n It also amazes me that people keep calling the book - Mommy Porn.\u00a0 From that label, you'd think it was a book about sex - which is NOT TRUE.\u00a0 I'll repeat that - FIFTY SHADES OF GREY IS NOT ABOUT SEX.\u00a0 It's a love at first sight story where two people who are totally different must learn to grow together because they can not exist apart.\u00a0 I'll grant you that the author spends a fair amount of book real estate writing about \"vanilla sex\" and \"S&M sex.\"\u00a0 But it's not a story about sex - it's a story about love.\u00a0<\/p>\n To me, the fact that \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" is a book about love takes it out of the erotica category.\u00a0 I'd label Fifty Shades as erotic romance.\u00a0 I think erotica belongs more to the floating torso books where it doesn't matter what head is on what body.\u00a0 In true erotica, I think\u00a0the story is about the sex.\u00a0 I have no moral qualms with erotica and I have none with a couple picking up an erotica\/porn movie and enjoying that either.\u00a0 It's just that for me, I don't enjoy\u00a0reading about a grubbing parade between people I could care less about. \u00a0Had Fifty Shades been a grubbing parade I'd never have clicked buy for part 2.\u00a0 So, get it right, people - Fifty Shades is not a sex story - it's a sexy love story.<\/p>\n One of the biggest, strongest reasons that I believe that I and many other writers owe EL James a big ole thank you is that Fifty Shades is\u00a0elevating the sales of contemporaries across the board.\u00a0 \u00a0I know I've seen it in my contemporaries - the Dangerous Relations<\/em> series.\u00a0 Historical romance has always been a big seller, but people seemed not to understand that a writer always creates their world.\u00a0 The writer creating her world means that even if Fifty Shades is set in Seattle, or my new one - Dangerous Relations:\u00a0 The Office Ink<\/a><\/em> is set in Myrtle Beach, neither setting will be the city or resort town you know and love.\u00a0 Both will be those cities as they exist and live and breathe for the author and her story.\u00a0 I've long wanted to see the sale of contemporaries pick up steam so that they equal or exceed the sale of historicals.\u00a0 It's finally happening and that's Fifty Shades of Fabulous.\u00a0<\/p>\n I'll end this lengthy review\/diatribe\/strange trip into the demented mind of a duck lady with a warning.\u00a0 Ms. James' ability to tell a good love story and her marketing genius (or her publishers) in knowing that people will chase a happy ending already made me click the buy button for \"Fifty Shades Darker.\"\u00a0\u00a0 I've started it - and I'd read faster except that my muse is now giving me Peter's story from my Forever series.\u00a0 However, I'll finish Part\u00a02 one of these fine days and I'm already having thoughts about the book.\u00a0\u00a0 Yes, they're strange duck lady kinds of thoughts.\u00a0 And you know I'll share 'em here, for the benefit of fans\u00a0brave enough\u00a0to wade into the unstable mind of the duck dominatrix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I've now finished reading \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" by EL James. As everyone on the planet likely knows by now, Grey is a trilogy and \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" is part 1. The books have received everything from lavish praise and adulation, to a life-changing movie deal for the author, to scorn and demeaning comments ...continue reading \"What Could Be Stranger Than Fifty Shades? My Review\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4,5,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2370"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2387,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2370\/revisions\/2387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}