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[slipstreamborne]

Yesterday at work I stopped a woman from buying Fifty Shades of Grey because she’d told me she was getting books for her son’s AP English course and considering the other title on her list was To Kill a Mockingbird I was pretty sure E.L. James was not a part of the local 9th/10th grade curriculum, advanced placement or no.

Correct book turned out to

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[slipstreamborne]

They're going to make movies out of them???!! HOW? From what I've heard there isn't really a whole lot of plot beyond the sex, and anything they tried would just come off as a bad Secretary riff.

The popularity of "mommy porn" (which, ugh, hate that term) doesn't really surprise me, given how huge the market for romance is and the open secret about how much of the appeal is in the sex scenes, so much so that there has to be a whole separate subgenre of romance for those who don't even want "fade to black" type scenarios.

What surprises me is why this book, and the mechanisms by which it became mainstream. There's so much higher-quality bdsm-focused erotica out there, but because it's published under the "erotica" label it doesn't reach that mainstream audience. We had originally shelved them as erotica when they first came out in print but they didn't move until they were reclassified as "general fiction" (and what a sham that category is; Nicholas Sparks' books are romance through and through but because he's a male author and men don't write romance [and iirc he puts up a fit whenever he's not shelved as a GF author] his books get special treatment, resulting in higher-than-otherwise sales).

If it's any consolation, though, I don't see the Grey series as having any serious staying power beyond 2012. They get brought back to us in almost brand-new condition all the time. Very little re-read value, unlike other romances where you get the stereotypical spine-cracks at all the juicy scenes.

(And yes, am watching! Good batch of talent this season, and loved that we got a team challenge in early. Rooting for Japanese guy because he's so nice but SO OUT THERE that nobody knows quite what to do with him; some very good technical skills in the whole batch but nobody's really standing out for me design-wise yet).

[ook]

There's rumors that the Japanese guy might quit early but I'm not certain of that. You must know from the Previews that someone quits this week though. Ugh. I hate when people quit and if that's true, I wonder if they'll bring back one of the people they just deservedly kicked off the show.

Come and hang out in the pchat sometime on Thursday. I miss the ProjRun discussions and Tailorschach.