I so seriously have to express my opinion on this one. There is a book right now on the best sellers list that I have to say I bought and read quite a bit before the whole “scandal” of the thing came out. I have to admit that I did like the book cover. It was simple and had a catchy title (Fifty Shades of Grey) so I read the e-preview first and that seemed good so I forked over my ten bucks for the thing and loaded it on my e-book. First couple of chapters were not too bad. Not literary genius, but not bad. By the third chapter I had realized a couple of things: the author clearly did not go back and proof read her own work because the use of the same handful of descriptive sentences are already starting to annoy the hell outta me and the story line was clearly not leading anywhere but down the path of porn. I keep reading but early on come to a part in the book where the main character is being encouraged to sign a contract that clearly is not in her best interests and quite obvious to me that if she had even an ounce of self esteem she would have told the contract holder to stuff it up his ass! At this point I tell myself “if she signs that contract I am done reading this crap.” This is the first time in my extensive reading career that I have ever told myself I am not going to finish a book and I have read plenty of shitty books that I always stick it out with until the end. As it turns out the main character never ends up signing the contract in THIS book, however there are a few more books to follow that are supposed to entice us to run to the book store and purchase up the whole series to see if she actually does! There has become quite a stir about these books – mostly because the book consists of all kinds of soft core porn scenes that the average house wife who missed the whole “Friday Nights without Borders” series on HBO a few years ago, have never seen the likes of. At the end of the read I wanted my money back and in no way will I be purchasing (or borrowing) the books that follow. Even local radio announcers were jesting that they could write a best seller like this, all they needed to do was write a bunch of predictable sex scenes and fill in the rest with blither and they are good to go! My opinion: If you take out the sex and the repetitive descriptors in the book you are most likely left with maybe a dozen or so pages of nonsense. I heard a nasty rumor that they were going to turn this book series into a movie! Oh lordy you have got to be kidding! How are they going to make this one R rated? I can just see it now – the ratings review board trying to tell the producers they need to take this smut to the Porn industry and have a nice day. How do you even tone it down enough to rate when 80 percent of the book is sex?
I have since been trying to “cleanse” my intellect with all kinds of books that involve the author putting a little more of an effort into an actual story line (I inherited a bunch of those older kind of books that are made with paper pages, mostly murder mysteries, and I have been steadily plowing through a book a day. At the end of this all I should be able to either apply for a job as a detective in the homicide department or start up a successful website on all the things you shouldn’t do if you want to commit a crime.)
Bottom line people – Don’t judge a book by its cover!