Book reviews

50 Shades of Grey (the trilogy) by E L James.

  I decided to write a review of the trilogy that I lovingly call 50 shades of shite.  I am only doing this to save you the trouble of reading it yourself.  I hope you are grateful.

So basically if you have read the Twilight series and you have a slightly dirty mind then you have pretty much already read 50 shades.  My guess is E L James read those books and thought "I know what's missing... sex!".  Most characters are copies.  There are one or two originals, or maybe I'm missing the link.  Except that Twilight is better quality writing and has an actual storyline.  So the basic storyline here is very much a Mills and Boons, you know one of them steamy ones you get free on Kindle.  But with a bit of filth thrown in.  The first sex scene, I admit it was sexy, but after that, it just got cringy.  Unfortunately there's a whole group of women out there, women about my age I expect, who think that every other woman enjoys being beaten.  Not gently spanked, beaten the shit out of.  So they don't want to appear prudish they all pretend they also enjoy having the living daylights knocked out of them.

Well, I do like to do things different.  Come near me with your belt buckle and you'll be wearing it as a butt plug.  And no I won't be worrying about whether to sterilise the damn thing first.

Christian Grey is not a brooding hero.  He is good looking  - God we know already.  Even with ginger hair, how they going to cast that one?  I'm thinking Rupert Grint, or the guy who played the principal in Ferris Bueller's day off but he's probably reaaaaaaalllllllyyyyyy old now.  He's also a manipulative controlling possessive jealous wife beater (Christian Grey that is, we never met Mrs Rooney in Ferris Bueller's day off so I have no idea if she was chained to a wall or not).  Oh and he's mercurial, we are told that a lot, I don't actually know what that word means.  I could look it up but I'm guessing it means something to do with mercury, so erm I guess that means he withstands hot and cold and is very poisonous?  Anyway, since when did we like that sort of thing?  Never is the simple answer.  He's the sort of man our mothers warned us about and we warn our daughters about.

Anastasia Steele is a simpering idiot.  No woman deserves to be beaten up by their partner but she comes bloody close.    Her sub conscious and her inner goddess.  Silly tarts give the rest of womankind a bad name.  She nearly gets raped by her so called best friend and then laughs it off.  Christian never forgives him for this, as well he shouldn't but then does the exact same thing himself a hundred times over.  Oh the irony.  Safe word?   How about byeeee?

And something about this series that wound me up right from the beginning.  The entire thing was written more like a screenplay than a book.  Clearly she wants this to be made into a film and wrote it exactly as she saw the film.  I noticed the Harry Potter books started to get like that from about book four onwards.  Suddenly characters changed to be more like the way they were played in the films.

And I'm guessing you fancy a fair bit of product placement in your films too yes?  iPod, iPad, Macbook, Blackberry, Audi, La Perla.  They better make the film quickly though cos I see these books dating very quickly.  All this top of the range technology that seems normal now but, with the speed things move, in a few years it will be as impressive to readers as if he had given her a Commodore 64 and a Motorola Brickphone.  And anyway what kind of college student doesn't already have a computer?  How did she get any coursework done?  I don't get it.  And references to current music.  Ana is a hipster, she likes Coldplay and Snow Patrol.  Christian likes classical, of course he does.  Cos he's a 118 year old vampire (sorry wrong book).  And Leila (crazy i.e. heartbroken ex sub) likes Britney Spears.  Cos she was a bit thick.

Here's a thought.  Leila was Christian's previous sub.  Each sub's contract only lasts a few months and during this time they spend every weekend at Christian's apartment.  They are at his beck and call, but never sleep in his bed with him.  They don't look him in the eye and are, I presume, terrified of him.  Yet, somehow, Leila felt comfortable enough to put a Britney Spears album onto this man's iPod?  I have been married for 14 years, I insist on letting my basset hounds sleep on my husbands pillow with him and I call him Johnny Bags to his face.  Yet I know that putting my music on his iPod is one boundary too far.  He doesn't put Pink Floyd on mine, I don't put My Chemical Romance on his.  We don't need a contract to work that one out.

I'm also wondering if E L James did any research before she wrote this book?  I mean apart from reading Twilight obviously.  She couldn't even get the American speech right.  Ana was English through and through.   Why set the book in America, it would have worked just fine in the UK.  I don't know if this is true but I heard the author had never been to the two American towns where the books are set before she wrote them (and I'm guessing doesn't dare set foot in them now) Christian in his penthouse in Canary Wharf would have been just as dull.  And I don't know much about the BDSM lifestyle but I've watched a few documentaries on channel 4, which I'm guessing is more than E L James did.  And I'm not entirely sure that portraying it as an outlet for sadists is entirely fair.  Most of the people on these programmes seem to have arrived as a couple at the point where they want a bit more excitement in their sex lives.  They don't come into it                   as a fresh faced virgin untouched by even their own hands.

So anyway, you want a brief synopsis of the storyline I suppose.  Stupid and easily manipulated girl gets sent to interview enigmatic hero, it's love at first sight, well not love as you know it but his version.  He pursues her in his own stalkery way, tries to get her to become his sub, she refuses but then agrees to try his lifestyle. Doesn't like it but likes him. Why does she love the billionaire Christian Grey so much?  He's not a nice person and they've got zilch in common.  It's definitely not the money, we're reminded of that over and over, it's not the money, she doesn't even want his money.  Oh yes, the sex.  Because it's the best she ever had... hang on a minute, it's the only sex she ever had.  I bet Jose would be great in bed, and a lot more fun and less baggage.  Mind you I thought that about Edward v Jacob too so what would I know?  He goes off on one if she so much as goes to the corner shop without him.  His palm twitches if she bites her lip, doesn't eat her dinner (here's the choo choo train, open the tunnel), doesn't wear the clothes his butler type thingy buys for her, goes to work without him.  Until he buys the company and makes her the boss - like you do.

And that is pretty much it... three books of it.  To be honest the sex scenes start to interfere with what storyline there is about half way through book two.  And by book three I actually skipped the sex scenes.  I'm not a prude, don't get me wrong.  I just think there's better smut out there.  I recommend Jackie Collins, Jilly Cooper, Harold Robbins, proper old school 70s smut.  All the men have massive shlongs and all the women have massive hair.

There's a bit of peril along the way, crazy paedophile old lady (except she's not that old but you kind of forget that at times and picture her barefoot on the bow of a ship saying "it's been 84 years and I can still smell the fresh paint" - or is that just me, was I supposed to be thinking more Anne Bancroft?), crazy i.e. heartbroken ex sub, crazy rapist boss.  They're all out to get him... or her... or both.  They deserve to be got.  And in the end they live happily ever after.  He still wants to beat the living daylights out of her every chance he gets.  She says she doesn't want it but she lets him do it anyway.  Because she loves him.  And that's what we do for the man we love.

Is it?  My man's lucky if I let him watch the football.  Maybe I should be a better wife?  I hear Ann Summers have got a 50 shades of dirty bastard collection out.  Bet it's expensive though, I could improvise with freezer bag clips and a wine stopper.

So if you're still peachy keen you better get on with it before we've all remembered we don't want to be covered in hickies and hand imprints on our arses at age 40 something.  Oh and one last thing.  If you read this book and then object to your partner watching porn alone, in the dark, with a box of tissues then you're a hypocrite.  Happy reading!

The Tiger who came to Tea by Judith Kerr.

You will laugh you will cry but mostly you will be glad it wasn't your house the tiger came to tea at otherwise you know it would be you having that great big tin of tigerfood next time Mummy forgot to stock up on foodies.

I like the way Mummy stays at home and cooks and cleans and looks after Sophie, and Daddy goes to work and wears a hat.  And they go to a cafe for tea instead of McDonalds.  I think that is the way it should be.

And I like the way the tiger doesn't eat anyone but I wish we found out what the tiger's name was.  I think he could have had a bigger part in the story.

The End.  By Bessie Basset-Morgan.  Aged somewhere between nearly 6 and ancient.

The hardest working man in showbiz by Ron Jeremy.

Ugh.  What a dreadful book.   The only good thing were the photos and that is only because they are so funny.   I can't work out whether he is joking or not most of the time.   Awful.  I didn't even finish it.  I suppose that leaves me unqualified to write this review really.

Bridget Jones:  Mad about the boy by Helen Fielding

Firstly I thought it was very unfair that in the list of thank yous at the back the author thanked Hugh Grant and Colin Firth but not Renee Zelwiegger.   I guess she doesn't like her anymore then.   Least that means there won't be a film.

Bridget is now 51, widowed and the mother of two young children.  The youngest who she must have been 46 when she had her.   That's a bit old to be having babies don't you think?    Anyway I didn't like it as much as I liked the other books.   Bridget still acts exactly the same as she did in the other books and quite frankly I'm all for growing old disgracefully but she would at least have grown up a little bit don't you think, being widowed with two little kids?  I think the story of Bridget bringing up her children with Mark Darcy and dealing with the mummy mafia and twitter and making her marriage work would have been much more interesting.   Killing him off was just lazy.

Past Imperfect by Julian Fellowes.

I thought I would like this book as it was written by the same person who wrote Downton Abbey and I love Downton Abbey.   I was wrong.   

The narrator is nameless but I imagine Mr Fellowes was writing this as himself.   He is a horrible snob and spends the entire book looking down his nose at everyone.   But I can't quite work out what it is about the narrator that made him part of the upper classes.  His father was a diplomat, we are told, but he doesn't seem to have a title.   Yet he hates anyone else who doesn't have a title.

Anyway the story is about a man who in 1968 is part of the debuntante set.   Something terrible happens that we spend the entire book waiting to find out and it turns out to be a massive disappointment but I won't spoil the surprise.

40 years later his former friend Damien Baxter calls him to his death bed to find which one of 5 women is the mother of his child, and only heir.  Of course the narrator hates Damien, but I think that's mainly because he was popular with the ladies and ended up very very rich.

Through a series of flashbacks and increasingly monotonous meetings with these women, who all remember the narrator in startling detail, despite him being self confessed ugly and dull back in the day.  And within minutes of these reunions they all tell him very personal details about their lives that you probably wouldn't tell your closest friends in real life.

The few occasions when the narrator meets "ordinary" people are cringeworthy.  For example when he meets some unsavoury types walking through London "Leave it, he's not worth it."   Really?   You clearly haven't met many working class people have you Mr Fellowes?  Some of us are actually OK, we don't all drag our knuckles and grunt you know.

In conclusion, I almost didn't finish this book.   Far from unputdownable, I'd describe it as barely pickupable.   I wish I could get my £1.67 back.   Very disappointed.