50 Shades of shit

Ooh Mr Grey so manly and masterful!

I read the 50 Shades trilogy and am left wondering why.  Why is this book selling so much?  Obviously I read all three as I am a bit of a completest and obviously have a thing for dodgy trilogies.   

I read it as research (yeah of course I did).  In the short story I wrote for a competition I wrote myself into a corner and had to write a sex scene.  It was excruciating for me & my tutor.  Both a bit embarrassed to mull over the nitty gritty of it.  So I thought it might be useful to read it.

So obviously sex sells. We all know that but OMG this is so badly executed what is all the fuss about?

There is a lot of sex in these books.  A LOT.  I am not a prude by any means.  But I think there is a lot. Someone I know was "shocked" and thought it was "so wrong".  Er, it's fairly tame really they are consenting adults but there's just quite a lot of it.  It is meant to be about a BDSM relationship but it's really bondage-lite. 

The characters are 2 dimensional and the writing is so repetitive.  It seems that EL James hits on a phrase per novel and then flogs it to death (pun intended).  FFS the number times Ana's breath 'hitched' in the 1st one, I was beginning to suspect she was an undiagnosed asthmatic.  And Grey who kept raking his fingers through his hair (nits perhaps?)

The plots were wafer thin.  In actual fact in the 2nd & 3rd books there are certain events that do liven things up a bit but they just get resolved too quickly.  They peak too early (yes that was intended too)

this has a more interesting story arc

Someone I know said that her husband said that every wife should read it, and maybe there is something in that.  It works to some extent.  It is titillating but really, come on, don't women want a bit more?

There must be other erotic novels that are much better written than this so I'm going to have keep researching...

Laters Baby
x


ps remember to enter my giveaway or you'll be severely punished

Weird donations to the school fair

So it was the school fair last Saturday.  Being on the PTA it is one of our jobs to try and cajole donations out of people for such events.  We're classed as a "deprived area" and many of the kids at school are on free school dinners. 

Times are hard, for everyone.  This year it seemed particularly hard to get anyone unconnected with the PTA to donate.  We have a 'Mufti Day' (it was called an Own Clothes Day in my day) where the children don't wear uniform but either donate something or donate £1 to go into the coffers but some people don't want to do even that.


On Friday we had to sort things in preparation for the next day & sift through the donations.  This is always an interesting task.  Some previous donations have included:

A dried up paint set
Unwashed clothes
Tin of soup
Coloured in colouring book
Half used toiletries
and generally a load of old tat

The Fancy Goods Tombola I always feel is a bit of an oxymoron.  One mans fancy is certainly another's a bit shit.  We started to include a brick a brack stall now as some of the tat donations can certainly be classed as that. 

The stall that always does well for donations is the book stall.  Whilst setting up on Saturday me & a friend spotted a gem.  At first I thought the cover art was a bit unsuitable but then I read the desciption at the bottom. 

My friend ferreted the book away (she has been reading it - for research purposes only - and apparently it is fair worse than I could imagine.  The one bit she read out to me detailed a man luring children into his house). The headmistress eyes popped out on stalks Tex Avery style when she saw it.  Then the Treasurer then found a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover which she then bought as she 'did her dissertation on it'. Yeah, of course she did. 

But it does make me wonder WTF?  Who on earth around here thinks this is suitable to donate to the school.  Yes we need whatever people can give but come on, that's just wrong.  What next?  An influx of 50 Shades of Grey* for the Christmas Fair?


* having read all of the 50 Shades book I feel a blog post coming on...

By the way, don't forget to enter my blogiversary giveaway...