Throwback Thursday: My Feelings on 50 Shades

Fifty Shades of Ridiculous

The following is how I felt about the (somehow, shockingly and inappropriately) best selling book Fifty Shades of Grey.  Everyone and their mom, quite literally, has read this nonsense. I had been a lone holdout, mainly because I was re-reading The Hunger Games trilogy for the sixth (not exaggerating) time. But I obtained a copy of it from a friend, because I certainly would never have forgiven myself for paying for such rubbish, and I figured I hadn’t anything to lose except for a few brain cells and several hours of my life.

In truth, I had to read it just because everyone else was (peer pressure, most obviously).  Now having read it,  I still don’t understand what all the fuss is about, because:

1. The writing is an absolute mess. I know very little about the author, but I am convinced that it is probably a pen name for a sixth grade boy. One who got a C- in English. And has unlimited internet access.

2. The characters are not even remotely likable. The main girl is a disaster. She isn’t heroic, she doesn’t exhibit any kind of personal growth, she isn’t nice or funny or clever. She just exists. And thinks about boinking this dude a lot. Speaking of, he is a mess too. Apparently, he is attractive and rich, and that is about the end of his “good” points. He is a douchecanoe who basically only wants to brood around about something that he won’t talk about. He is like that annoying friend on Facebook who posts “ugh, having such a bad day” and when you ask why, she replies “oh, I don’t want to talk about it”. Yeah, he is that guy, multiplied. Imagine dealing with these two for what seemed like a million pages.

3. The plot is mundane. Is there anything we didn’t see coming? Girl meets “mysterious” guy. Guy falls for girl. Girl falls for guy. Sex ensues. Guy cannot open up to girl. Girl leaves. To be continued. Such a nail-biter. I am clearly lying.

 I would be mad at myself for reading it, but now I am better able to make fun of it when in the presence of others.   That being said, there is a legitimate chance I will read the second, just because I got it for free, and apparently have nothing better to do with my time.

Fifty Shades of Relief: It’s Over! 

I am going to be straight with you here: The next two books (whatever they were even called, I cared so little that I didn’t pay attention) of the Fifty Shades trilogy were boring messes. The first one was so abysmal that it gave me some kind of humor value. It was easy to make fun of, so poorly written, so absolutely ridiculously stupid, that it somehow kept my interest. I was itching to see what other nonsense I could laugh about. But these, these were a different beast entirely.

The problem was, they were not as bad as the first one. I suppose the author took an Intro To Writing course at her local community college, because some of the words on the pages actually made sense.

I am not going to lie to you and pretend to have read these three monstrosities word for word. Really, I skimmed through quite a bit, especially the monotonous sex scenes. I guess some people were into them, but it just seemed like the same. exact. thing. happening over and over again. If it were me, I probably would have told him to hurry up because The Real World would be on in 5.

*Spoiler Alert* I am going to recap, so don’t read if you haven’t read these and actually plan to (which, by the by, I do not encourage or endorse)

So here’s the summary of the books, in the best way I can muster:  Boring girl and uber-controlling guy meet, have strange sex, break up, fall in love, get married, and fight crime, all while they fight non-stop about complete nonsense. Then girl gets pregnant, because she cannot seem to figure out how birth control works. Guy gets extra pissy. More crime fighting ensues. Then they have (and assumingly greatly mess up) three kids. The end.

Yawn.  I must say, I have never been so happy to have a book end. I think the worst part is that the author has the audacity to think we’ll believe that this group will be living “happily ever after”, considering they basically yelled and fought through the whole series.

I only wish there was a “zero star”.