Fifty Shades of Grey : the worst book in the history

[alexandral]

Summary: If you are a good virgin, an ultra-rich guy will appear in your life one day. He will spank you and tell you what to do with your life.

Comments

[endlessdeep]

I'm curious, but like you, I'll be damned if I'll pay for the book. It sounds awful. I read the first Twilight book and that was it. Saw the first Twilight movie and laughed through the whole thing. It was so bad.

[alexandral]

This is much worse than Twilight, Twilight had some kind of a plot! Shades of Gray is a collection of porny scenes connected by "OH NO! Highly successful and rich Mr. Grey is in my bed!" internal monologues by Ana, the herouine.

[endlessdeep]

lol. Oh boy. I don't think I would make it through the book. I don't mind some well written smut, but if it's the entire book with no plot there no way I'm getting through that. I stopped reading a couple books earlier this year for that very reason.

[failte_aoife]

I also got it via *cough* alternative means and just agree with everything you said. I actually managed till about 40 pages before the end but then just couldn't take it any longer...usually if I have gotten so far with a book, I finish it...but this one. NO WAY in hell. I was at a point where I just looked at my e-reader and thought of all the more pleasant alternatives to reading on (doing the washing up, ironing, cleaning my room, jumping out of my window).

I also have no clue about BDSM but all the scenes seemed so many levels of wrong to me.

[alexandral]

I was waiting and waiting for something in this book to "connect" with me, but it all just was so awful.

As to BSDM - this is BSDM as written by a fanfiction writer who sits at home and fantasises about it from Internet porn (I am not an expert in the subject, though :D)

[failte_aoife]

this is BSDM as written by a fanfiction writer who sits at home and fantasises about it from Internet porn

At one point, I think when she's in the 'red rom of pain' for the first time and describes it, my first thought were Yeah, if you told me now that I had to write a description of a BDSM-playroom and wouldn't even let me on Wikipedia to research it, I'd describe it pretty much like this...(There are chains...and a bed...and whips...and there are also...THINGS)...just probably with better prose.
*sighs* this book simply manages to be absolutely horrible on every single level.

[fivil]

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when bad fanfiction of a bad book becomes such a massive bestseller, with people acting like erotic fiction or BAD erotic fiction has never existed before.

Just ..wtf.

I'm all for remix culture and the theory that no idea is truly new (since all authors are influenced by other things they've read/seen/heard) but this is just ridiculous.

Gah.

[alexandral]

I think the book somehow just found it's way into mainstream publishing (though - how?) by someone who have seen it as an opportunity to breach the "new" subjects. ** sigh ** If just the book wasn't so atrociously bad!

I like this article ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/30/fifty-shades-grey-women-sadomasochism ) about the books and what it says:

The feminist writer and academic Marina Warner believes the unexpectedly wide appeal of this explicit fiction could be a sign of how difficult people now find it to feel aroused in an era when sex and nudity have become so commonplace. "There has been a general unveiling of the body in our culture and there is a connection between prohibition and arousal," she said. "It is in some way linked to our feelings about the sacred and the profane. I definitely don't want to go back to censorship, but I don't think the answer is to reach for extremes either."

[singing_tree]

Ew ew ew I promised myself I would never have to read this book when I found out what it was about. You deserve a prize for getting through it.

If Twilight is stupid, Fifty Shades sounds horrible.
It's just plain BAD fanfiction. It should've stayed that way.

[alexandral]

When I first saw the book in a book store I thought - "oh, another bad book, that is all", and quickly forgot it. But then - IT IS EVERYWHERE: Some people I know in RL who are not big on book reading read it (admittedly, we had a good laugh about it). The book was ALL OVER MOSCOW as in "New book! New book! In Russian soon!" and this finally induced me into finding out what it is about..

[scottishlass]

I only recently found out that this was actually a Twatlight fanfic before it got edited and published and when I first read a preview I told a friend (who was loving it) how it felt like a fan fiction of the bad kind.
The things that get published nowadays (shakes head) ...

[alexandral]

Oh, yes, I think the main appeal many people was "Look WHAT IS PUBLISHED NOWDAYS". Yes, shaking head is the only thing to do.

[nutmeg3]

I'm not sure it even got edited. She changed the names and then sold it to some small publisher pretty much as-is, and I don't know as they actually did anything to it. *sigh*