Having had two moderately-high-brow previous book club reads (Where Angels Fear To Tread and Tender Is The Night), we've decided to go all self-published e-book 'orrible with our next choice Fifty Shades Of Grey.
If you've missed the hype - and I have to confess I had - this book is all over the place at the moment. The only reason I can fathom for this is because it's very saucy and being bought by ladies aged 30-40, meaning the book is being rather dismissively dubbed "mommy porn" by the press. I say dismissively because it seems a little unfair to declare mothers the only subset of society stupid enough to read anything supposedly this self-published and 'orrible, when clearly book clubs who have already fulfilled their classics quota for 2012 may also be hungry for trash.
I am only mildly apprehensive because:
-in spite of its ubiquity, I've not heard anyone say it's even alright, let alone good.
-on the Wikipedia entry it mentions that it was originally intended as Twilight fan-fiction, which is Fifty Shades Of Fucking Horrible whether you like Twilight or not.
The rest of me is just delighted we have snuck another smutty book into Book Club, regardless of the fact that I got annihilated for choosing Riders a couple of years ago. Although I'm hoping it's not as graphic as The Story Of O, which I could barely talk about because I was so embarrassed.
....will report back....(and tell you which page numbers the naughty bits are on, obv).
I've read the first few pages, no naughtiness yet.
ReplyDeleteDisappointing, I was expecting wall-to-wall smut. I just need to slay the last 180 pages of Anna Karenina and I'll be reading too...
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Oh dear. I believe the next chapter is probably where the smut begins in earnest. There is no way I'd be continuing with it if it wasn't book club (honest guv).
DeleteErk!!
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Story of O really would be the most awkward book club book ever, I wouldn't be able to talk about 90% of the book without going a nearly inhuman shade of puce.
ReplyDeleteI am intrigued by Fifty Shades of Grey, my Twitter stream has been mentioning it a lot, but I still haven't really worked out whether it's positive or negative mentioning!
K x