Fifty Shades of Grey and other fan fictions that shouldn't be published

Let me start this first off  by saying, no, I do not think that the Fifty Shades series should never have been published but fan fiction is meant for the interwebs and not for the low price of $9.99 on Amazon (if you have a kindle of course). I am more upset at the speed of the books were published after the success of the first book. The book was published January 2011. Within the year, two more books were published. Talk about a cash cow. I can't entirely blame the author, who wouldn't want to get on that money. I mean, isn't that what YOLO is all about, or whatever these rappers are telling us these days. I have to blame the editors and probably publicly put them in the stocks because they allowed this tripe (more so with the third book) to even hit the shelves.

That is my overall feeling after reading book 3. But alas, I get ahead of myself. Let's start with book one.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Ah yes, the book that started it all. Let me just say, I usually do not get pulled into the hype. Case in point, I still have not read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or The Hunger Game series. Don't even get me started with Twilight. However, all I ever heard was Fifty, Fifty, Fifty and I just had to find out what it was about. I asked someone in my office if they had read them and lo and behold, she was reading the second one. She warned me not to read them till I was done with exams (I still was in my last week of school) and not to read them if I was mad at my boyfriend (which I probably was). With her affirmation, I bought it on my kindle but let it sit for about two days until I said "screw it" and started to read.

This book is definitely about the shock value. It starts off slow because you are expecting this hard core erotic sexiness to happen on the jump off. However, E.L. James does a good job in this story to put in an actual story line. It's great. You actually care about the characters. The main broad, Ana Steele, is a strong heroine who makes the mistake (luckily or not) of falling head first into Christian Grey, the billionaire CEO who happens to be ridiculously good looking (I hope your taking notes Mark Zuckerburg). Her best friend and roommate, Katherine Kavanaugh (enough with the alliterations), is the editor of her college's school newspaper and has coincidentally gotten sick and has sent the shy and non-journalist Ana to conduct this interview she has arranged with Grey (why a billionaire CEO sit down with a college newspaper is beyond me, but oh wait, he's conferring degrees and the university and wait for it, he is also donating a multi-million dollar grant to the school as well, silly me). She gives her a list of questions and says GOOD LUCK BITCH. Not really, but that would have been much funnier.

So basically Ana makes an ass out of herself in this interview, asks Christian if he's gay and basically comes off as a clueless, unprepared, lazy college student. However, Christian for whatever reason is fascinated by her and her Wal-Mart jacket. Anyway, they have these "random" encounters but nothing comes of it. However one night, Ana gets drunk with her friends Katherine and Jose, drunk dials Grey and the rest is history.

Like I mentioned earlier, the book is all about shock value especially if you are not of the erotic novel variety and have never seen an episode of Sex and the City. E.L. James makes Samantha Jones and Nora Roberts look like nuns compared to what Ana and Grey have going on here.

So, once you get past all the sex, the book is quite captivating and engrossing. I did not get much studying done while reading this book. Oh well, still got an A in marketing bitches. Anyway, I digress.

I enjoyed the banter between Ana and Grey. It was fun to read how they interacted. Their emails are probably the best and you will surely get a laugh when you read those. This first book does a decent job with character development and you actually care about what happens to everyone so you want to buy the second book. I won't get into too much of the plot (I mean it's not that deep or anything) but it involves a contract and sex slaves. No big deal. I think E.L. James was trying to start with the whole finding yourself as a person bit and not conforming but honestly that's lost with all the sex scenes.

Please do not expect a literary masterpiece and please if I hear you say that this was the greatest series of all time, I have the right to bitch slap you and tell you Kanye West said that first and make you pick up The Old Man and the Sea (it's short, you'll get over it). That's real literature, ass.

I won't finish this review on the other two, since I am at work and I have a job where they don't pay me to write blogs. Until next time. Or should I say laters.

Everything Is Illuminated

Sorry readers, if there are any of you out there. Due to my many school obligations, I have been unable to keep up with my blog and my reading for that matter. I am trying to catch up with writing my blogs for the books I have read, such as Everything is Illuminated and Pride and Prejudice. I am currently finishing reading Dr. Zhivago, so I do have some posts that I do need to catch up on. It is hard juggling 5 classes, 2 part time jobs and the rest of my life to keep doing my reading. I am upset that it has taken me so long to finish reading my books because I am missing the bookclub deadlines and I love to keep up and I can't! I hate not being able to participate in my book club as I was able to to do over the summer, but with an exam and lots of homework to do, it really has been a struggle to keep up and school is obviously the first priority. However, let's get off this dreary subject and let us move on to the novel!
So, Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, is about a guy name Jonathan Safran Foer who travels to the Ukraine to find a woman who supposedly saved his grandfather from the Nazis with the help of his tourguide Alex, and his grandfather Alex, and their dog Sammy Davis Jr. Jr. The book is written in two parts, the part written by Alex which tells the story of his week adventure to find this woman who may or may not be alive. The other part is written by Jonathan who tells his story of the village and of his grandfather. This was a little annoying to me because each chapter alternated between the two stories. However, as the story unfolded, I grew to love the characters in the story that Alex told.
I did not like reading Jonathan's story of the village, I mean it was folksy and interesting but it could have been told at the beginning. It is funny to read Alex's story because of the broken English, the words and verbs that he uses and it seems to personalize him and make him more likeable. I really connected with his character and his grandfather. Jonathan's characters seems cold and aloof but he mainly is a fish out of water in a country he has no idea about or what the customs are.
I wish I could write more but I am running out of time and I am at work! Pick up this novel as it is an easy read and enjoyable!

On to the next!