Fifty Shades of Grey

Goddess of Geekdom wrote:I started reading the first book and holy moly.........

This is hilariously awful. Not as awful as Twilight, but hilarious in a good way. Ana is an idiot. And a dope.

I got the first chapter or so as a sample for the Kindle. I read it to my SO, and we had to stop every few lines for commentary.

It was the only way it could have happened, otherwise, I would have been pissed off the whole time.

Seriously, there's unreliable narrators, and then there's being totally disingenuous. All the protesting of "I need to study, there was nobody else to interview Christian Grey, my journalist friend couldn't have at least instructed me on how to conduct a professional interview, he's totally hot but I hate his guts so I'm going to think about studying the whole time".

And really...the chick got sick and THAT was her best excuse NOT to interview Grey? She's been thoroughly harassing him for months for an interview and being SICK stops her from doing so? What kind of crap plot contrivance is that?

And the questions from this hard-hitting going-to-be-a-journalist who can talk anyone into doing anything...really?

I mean, I get this was fanfiction, but really?

I love how Kate is supposed to be this worldly, been-around-the-block older sister type when she's just as stupid as Ana. I also love how Ana talks about her like she has a crush, or something. Someone must have written Ana/Kate fanfic by NOW, right?

I would, but first I need to finish this high school AU fic where Ana is a plucky orphan and Christian is a vampire.


....What?

We read this for book club this month (for the lulz, I swear). Everyone pretty much agreed that Christian was a creepy weirdo and if he weren't a gazillionaire, he'd be one of those losers trolling Craigslist that they make Lifetime movies about. I was amused by my friend serving bundles of Twizzlers secures by tiny little plastic zip ties, though. Ew.

The best selling British book of all time?! I think there's a lot of qualifiers at play but the story will spread and continue to play into the ridiculous hype surrounding this series.

They've got to be spinning those numbers some way, because someone named Harry Potter would like to have a chat with Ms. Steele, and maybe use an unforgivable curse or two on Mr. Grey (I think the curses would be forgivable in this case). If James has truly outsold Rowling, I weep for us all. But especially for the country that gave us William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Arthur Conan Doyle, J. M. Barrie, C. S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien. And those are just my favourite British authors; there's hundreds more who've written wonderful books. There really is no accounting for taste, or good publicity.

I came across this parody yesterday. Favourite quote: "If you're a woman, you've read my novel Fifty Shades of Grey, because it's the law." If my high school acquaintances' Facebook status updates are anything to go by, maybe it is. I also loved Fake!James's excitement: "Can you guess what they did next? It!"

NONONONONONONONO!

I like how the text says "Have any questions?" at the bottom. ALL THE QUESTIONS. ALL OF THEM.

GROSS.

Oh, ew. EW.


I was on Pinterest a few weeks ago and there was this one obnoxious picture I kept seeing people repin that was all like "Wanna bet we'll see an explosion in the birth rate thanks to 50 Shades? Tee hee!" I finally couldn't take it anymore and started replying "Let's just hope these children don't inherit their parents' dreadful taste in literature" every time I saw it come up again. I am an asshole.

Raksha wrote:... I finally couldn't take it anymore and started replying "Let's just hope these children don't inherit their parents' dreadful taste in literature" every time I saw it come up again. I am an asshole.

But an asshole with taste! And company!

I was given 50 Shades as a birthday gift, thankfully my step brother had the for sight to give me the receipt as well, so I returned it and bought chocolate. Much nicer to digest.

Did the giver, ah, know anything about the contents? My very-pious very-Jewish maiden aunt once gave me the THIRD book of the "Left Behind" series as a present. I have a feeling she grabbed the first thing she saw, because why would you give anyone the third book in a series, even if it wasn't contrary to everything you've ever believed?

He meant well, he's not a reader (yeah, I don't understand either). Basically he walked into Target and picked up the first books he saw.

Christ. A coworker of mine asked me my opinion on this series about a month or two ago, because I'm considered the most avid reader in my office. I told her as much about it as I could, emphasizing the fact that the characters are horrible, the "plot" is horrible, and that it is actually very poorly written Twilight fanfic that managed to get a publisher. She had been curious about it because all of these other women that she knows have been reading it, and she wanted to know what was up. Well, today she informs me that she read it, and simply couldn't put it down! She just thought it was so sexy, that Christian Grey was God's gift to man, etc. I honestly don't understand people sometimes. My coworker is a very strong minded, take-no-shit kind of person. How is it then that a woman like that could not see how shitty a character Christian Grey and his insufferable girlfriend are? I think that's what bothers me the most about this series. A lot of generally reasonable/levelheaded women are falling all over themselves for this book. Are looks and money so attractive to them that they're willing (even though it's just a book) to just abandon all sense of independence and self respect? Maybe this is so frustrating for me because there are only a few women in my office, and only a few read, and those that do read all share the same fascination for this type of character.

This is a really good article that I saw recommended on ONTD of all places:

Why Are Women Devouring Fifty Shades of Grey?

It describes my feelings exactly about the character of Christian Grey, and why I'm horrified that women are elevating him to Perfect Man status.

That article pretty much expresses my own feeling on the subject. This book is horrifying; even worse than the POS that inspired it. I saw something on ONTD the other day that was all "50 Shades would be better as a TV series?" and I wanted to throw someone off a cliff.

How would it even work as a TV series? I guess you could show it on premium cable, but HBO generally asks for something resembling plotting and decent characterization.

I was walking past the magazine rack at the grocery store today and saw a magazine called 50 Shades (and based on the few cover story titles I saw, it seems like it ties in). Has this thing spawned an actual magazine?

Hee, this is reminding me of what I just saw on Groupon Goods. (In case you can't see what the link leads to, it's a line of t-shirts with quotes inspried by 50 Shades, including: "Keep Calm until Laters Baby" (what the...), "Keep Calm and Listen to Your Inner Goddess" and "Cry Because Christian Grey is Fictional" (sigh*). Over 1000 bought...

mayram wrote:I was walking past the magazine rack at the grocery store today and saw a magazine called 50 Shades (and based on the few cover story titles I saw, it seems like it ties in). Has this thing spawned an actual magazine?

I think (hope) that it is one of those one-off magazines that come out about movies. I admit, I saw some at the drug store and hid them behind some other magazines.

When Twilight became popular among older women a lot of romance bloggers attributed it at least somewhat to the idea that there were a group of romance readers who really enjoyed the so-called "alph-hole" heroes and Edward as a throwback to when that was much more common. To me, 50 Shades is the logical extension of this. Erotic romance has been taking up a larger and larger portion of romance sales and BDSM romance is very popular. It was only a matter of time before something hit the mainstream. The Twilight connection made it irresistible.

"50 Shades Author Enraged by Copyright Violation"

Yes, you read that right. The fanfic writer slapped a UK housewife with a C&D for holding 50 Shades themed lingerie parties, saying "You can’t just hijack something someone else owns.”


In the immortal words of Brian Krakow: How ironic can you get without, like, puking?

Raksha wrote:"50 Shades Author Enraged by Copyright Violation"

Yes, you read that right. The fanfic writer slapped a UK housewife with a C&D for holding 50 Shades themed lingerie parties, saying "You can’t just hijack something someone else owns.”


In the immortal words of Brian Krakow: How ironic can you get without, like, puking?

We were talking about this last night on Twitter. She's so damn punchable. And really, ugly greedy.

If there were ever a person undeserving of her success, she's it. I'm no fan of Stephenie Meyer, but I'd love for her to say, "OK, that's it...GAME ON, 'Snowqueen's Icedragon'!"

What a turd. I can't wait until the hype dies down, and no one cares about her "writing" anymore.