It's no surprise that I've fallen for a Mr. Christian Grey. Well, that's not entirely true, because he kind of scares the crap of out me. But I have been known to jump on a bandwagon or two, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I jumped on this one too.
A few thoughts on the Fifty Shades trilogy:
1. Confession time times a thousand: Fifty Shades of Grey started out as Twilight fan fiction. I have been known to read Twilight fan fiction {<---- see, please don't judge me...}. This was distracting for me, because everything about this book screams Twilight. The characters are almost exact copies {minus the whole vampire thing...} of those in Stephenie Meyer's novels. And since I've read Twilight fan fiction before, I know a lot of the scenarios and themes that people like to use when talking about Twilight. A lot of the stuff in this book I've read before, just in different writing, which really bothered me. I can't help but be a little frustrated with the fact that someone wrote this book and became so successful by piggybacking on someone else's story. I know Twilight well enough to see every. single. similarity between the two. She couldn't even come up with her own characters! But while I can get over this frustration and annoyance, I really couldn't help but feel distracted every time something came up that proved how similar the two stories were.
2. As much as number one bothered me, I did like the way she portrayed Anastasia's character. In Twilight, Bella is so submissive and weak, which is pretty ironic considering that Christian Grey wants to get Ana {Bella's counterpart} into a dominant/submissive relationship. Don't get me wrong, there were definitely times when Ana was annoying as...you know...but there were times when you, as a reader, couldn't help but feel sexy and strong along with her. I didn't know that I necessarily realized how weak some women are portrayed in literature. It's really a breath of fresh air to see a girl who is unsure of herself at times, but essentially confident in her abilities and doesn't really need a knight in shining armor to come save the day {even if he does, sometimes}.
3. I'm going to be honest for a second and say that the sex really didn't bother me. It may have been a little more explicit than I expected, but I did know what the book was about when I bought it. What does surprise me, however, is how popular this is becoming. I joked on Twitter and Facebook the other day that I'm pretty sure Fifty Shades is some type of social experiment, because while sex has always been a pretty mainstream topic, this type of sex hasn't always been discussed. And it's almost a good thing, to bring a deviant {deviant = not necessarily bad} sexual lifestyle to the forefront of popular culture. I don't think James necessarily portrayed the BDSM culture in a negative light, only told a personal account of a fictional character's experience. And people are eating it up! Erotica like this has always been {secretly} popular, but I don't know that I've ever heard of such an explicitly sexual book be talked about so openly.
4. And lastly, this book gives me hope. Because, let's be real here, if something as poorly written as Fifty Shades of Grey {and it's two sequels} can shoot to the top of the New York Times Bestsellers list, I can probably get published too. Someday. Right?
What did you all think? Have you read these books? Do you have any other book recommendations for me?