50 Shades of Crap

A few months ago, a bookclub friend told us about this steamy book she was reading - 50 Shades of Grey.  While we decided not to read it as a bookclub book, we all were going to read it anyway.  Soon after she mentioned the book, I started to hear about it everywhere - the news, other people, store windows, facebook. I read the trilogy last month (not having a computer is making blogging more slow - so my review will not be as comprehensive as it could have been right after I read the books). 

After reading the series, I began to talk about it because I had issues with it.  I was the only one out of the few friends I know that had negative things to say.  People were shocked that I didn't love it.  I'll tell you why.  Here are my top three reasons:

1.  The writing was atrocious.  It read like an 8th grade paper, which is great for all those people who stopped reading after school, and finally picked up a book again because of all the hype.  On top of the lousy writing, it was way to repetitive.  I understand the writer wanted to highlight certain terms or whatever - but reading it over and over and over and over and over was really annoying and distracting.  Am I being too harsh? No, just because I read close to a book a week - I want MORE out of my book.  There are other books out there about sex, love, overcoming issues, etc.  So why was this one so popular? I am struggling to understand. 

2.  The sexiness.  I found that many young people and very naive people enjoyed this part immensely.  I am not saying I am very experienced - but I have experimented a little bit and I have about 14 years of sexual experience.  I found it to be a bit unrealistic in (many) parts and the WOW factor of the toys was not that shocking to me.  I found that I was skimming through the sex scenes because they were not that enjoyable for me. 

However, as I was reading it, I could understand why so many people would want more out of their relationships...desire is important (I wrote a post about that months ago).  I have no doubt that this will put into people's heads they are not happy in their relationship and start cheating or getting divorced, only to not find what they imagine could happen (remember, this is a fictional book).  Sure, there are a few lucky few that have that passion and steam, but a majority of our population will not have that indefinitely.  And for goodness sake - don't wait until you read a book to create steam in your relationship...do that for yourself anytime.  I struggle to wonder how I am single, when I seem to be the only person who understands what it takes to want/have a very healthy sex life on top of a great relationship  (it is not impossible).

3.  The story, while not the best, I kept reading. I wanted to finish the series, I wanted to know if it got better and I wanted to be able to talk about the book to other people.  After all, I read all the Harry Potters, Twilight & Hunger Games. It is hard not to read a full series, I need closure.  I enjoyed book 3 the most because they had a that little bit of action in there.

So there it is.  I did not enjoy the books that much.