Blog 3- Fifty shades of Grey / E. L. James.

For my next blog entry I fully intended to copy paste an earlier review I posted as a Facebook status, add a little more commentary, and open by saying- ‘Here’s one I prepared earlier…’ like it was a cooking show, or some shit. But Facebook has other ideas, and chooses not to play the game and let me access it. Facebook knows I can’t cook, and Facebook is evil, I just haven’t figured out its agenda yet: - World domination is a little too broad a theory, and not quite specific enough as to how its insidious plot will affect me personally.

It’s been a while since I read this, so dredging it all up again is painful, and counterproductive to all the work I’ve done to bury it in a deep dark hole where it can no longer hurt me- but a blog must be blogged, and the pain must be revisited for the sake of my art… And besides; I realised that right now I could be either blogging about this- or reading Persuasion… It’s really hard to choose.

What can I say about 50 shades of Grey, other than it represents all that is wrong with the world today… But that’s a bit rich considering I just reviewed two books about two wars… So perhaps the 1^st thing wrong with the world is war, and the 2^nd thing is 50 shades?... But I suppose it’s not so much that the book exists, as it is that it gets on all the ‘most popular’ lists, and THAT’S what’s wrong with the world… But then I have to admit that I helped it get on the lists, because I bought it. I paid money for it. I have perpetuated the evil, and contributed to the devolution of humanity for which I am eternally sorry.

So why is this steaming pile of word excrement the second worst thing in the world today? Well it’s not the fact that that it’s ‘mummy porn’… I bought it because it is ‘mummy porn’, and I thought it might be fun. It was not fun; it was awful (not intentionally sounding like Grumpy Cat here). It gave me new wrinkles I didn’t need. I had a perpetual involuntary scowl on my face the entire time I was reading it, and all through the subsequent readings of the equally abominable sequels (yes I read them too, I meant to do a thorough job of it, so that when I criticised them, it came from a place of knowledge, rather than hearsay); which meant I had that screwed up, frowny look on my face for pretty much a solid week; it refused to go away in between readings, and took some coaxing to go away long after, as my delicate psyche was deeply affected. I am still horrified that women are actually enjoying this insidious, offensive, self-hating, badly written BULLS#!T, and am embarrassed to claim kinship with these people.

… and I still haven’t managed to say why.

Perhaps I should try harder to structure this?

 1)   It began as Twilight fan-fic. Ok, that isn’t necessarily the kiss of death, as other things have started out with less than illustrious beginnings, and some fan fic is actually quite good. But this isn’t. I think her editor was ‘Mr Spellcheck’, and his associate ‘Mr That’ldo’. I’ve read better fan fic, but I haven’t read much worse. She uses entirely inappropriate analogies about smug hamsters… and other things that I have successfully blocked from my mind, so I won’t be dredging them back up thank you very much (shudders). InnerGodessInnerGoddessInnerGoddess… OhMyOhMyOhMy… She actually refers to her lady parts as ‘down there’… Oh there is just too much wrong with this.

2)      ‘TWILIGHT’ fan fic… I mean really; consider the source material.

3)      It is SOOoooooo repetitive! Someone did a word count in a review on Goodreads, and came up with-

      "Oh My" - 79
"Crap" - 101
"Jeez" - 82
"Holy (shit/fuck/crap/hell/cow/moses)" - 172
"Whoa" - 13
"Gasp" - 34
"Gasps" - 11
"Sharp Intake of Breath" - 4
"Murmur" - 68
"Murmurs" - 139
"Whisper" - 96
"Whispers" - 103
"Mutter" - 28
"Mutters" - 23
"Fifty" - 16
"Lip" - 71
"Inner goddess" - 58
"Subconscious" – 82

4)      There is no plot- Forgive me for thinking a book should have one.

5)      If you’re going to write about sex, and glorify it, you should at least write about GOOD sex. Don’t write about bad sex and pretend it’s good. You’re not fooling me. I mean, there’s a scene in here with a wash cloth, that’s just cringeworthy; and the first sex scene… wow, This 21 year old virgin, who’s never had sex OR ever masturbated before manages multiple orgasms without this ‘sex God’ even touching the usual bits that tend to facilitate this- Which prompted me to question whether the author had ever had actual sex, or had any knowledge of how the female body actually works. They say ‘write what you know’, she clearly doesn’t know much.

6)      This is not a book about BDSM. If you expect it to be, you will be disappointed. If after reading it you still think it’s about BDSM, you are misinformed, and could potentially cause a lot of damage to yourself, or others. Not that I am the world’s leading expert in all things BDSM of course, but I have discussed it with others a little more… au fait with such things, and there does seem to be a grain of contention. BDSM versus Abuse. I stand clearly in the ‘abuse’ camp; and say to that person who described Anastasia as the perfect sub, and very like one of his/her (online, gender non-specific conversation) current subs: I say I’m awfully glad you’re not MY dom sweetheart.

7)      I hated both protagonists. Nothing relatable whatsoever about them. Christian Grey is a broken, damaged, ‘50 shades of fucked-up’ man who was serially abused by a friend of his mother since he was 15. This has left him incapable of having a relationship of any kind other than as an abuser to a weaker individual. Anastasia Steele is a weaker individual. There is nothing to like, or relate to here.

8)      It frightens the living f@#k out of me that women, and impressionable girls are reading this excrement, and holding up this relationship as an ideal… something to be aspired to… When I grow up I want to be an abuse victim to a broken man… as long as he is excruciatingly good looking, and insanely rich; and THAT’S what is wrong with the world!

EXCREMENTAL!

This has become way to long for my blog, and I could go on and on about how offensive I find this whole thing… actually it’s quite difficult to stop myself. I don’t have the book anymore; my daughter ran away with it. I told her ‘No, no don’t read that shite! It’ll destroy your brain cells, and undermine your individuality and self-worth!’. Of course this only enticed her further, because that’s what happens when you say ‘No’ to teenagers. She didn’t read MUCH of it though. She realised she was reading word vomit. The book never came back to the house though, which is fine by me. There have been dog turds laid under the desk in the back room that I would rather cherish than this book.

Blog 2- The book thief / by Markus Zusak

So I read The Book Thief… Finished it…um… yesterday? Day before yesterday? Typing hurts my back, and I am grumpy and unbloggy… 

Have had a very sore back and a house full of babies (that I still haven’t properly managed to pick-up after) all week, and I find myself getting far too much enjoyment out of whingeing about the former. Even though reading The Book Thief reminds one how little one really has to whinge about.

It’s another book with a back drop of war. Different war of course. This book is set in Germany between 1939 and 1944, which helps you guess WHICH war. Our protagonist Liesel Meminger, is nine years old at the beginning of this story when she is on a train journey with her mother and brother to Himmel Street, in Molching. Her brother dies on the train, and her mother is taking her to live with foster parents. She will never see her mother again. Anyone with even the vaguest knowledge of the German language knows that ‘Himmel’ means ‘Heaven’; but there’s not a lot of resemblance between the street and its name, unless you count the part where everyone dies and possibly goes to Heaven… if there is such a fabled place.

I enjoyed this book a lot. We have all read books; watched movies about this time in history. This one was different in that Liesel Meminger is not a Jew, nor did she even really know of any Jews before the events in the story. She is just an ordinary German girl of no special consequence, so this book tells a story of what ordinary, not wealthy, or politically minded German people endured during this time. When you read about/watch movies about the atrocities committed by the Nazis around this time you wonder (or at least I do) how it could have been allowed to happen. How an entire nation of people could be so prejudiced and callous towards another group of people not particularly different from them. The answer of course is they weren’t… they just weren’t allowed to say so, or do anything about it, for fear of the same treatment. You have to protect your own family first, because they were in danger, always. Never doubt it.

But mostly it’s a book about a little girl, who steals books… or has them given to her, or writes them in a basement. It’s about how words save her life, or symbolise the loss of a life, or document a life, give meaning to a life.

I didn’t think much of the ‘Death as narrator’ literary device used in the telling of her story, and Death… as someone who professes to use distraction (Ooh look at the colour of the sky) so as not to have to pay too close attention to the ones left behind, the ones who survive, good old Death seems to pay an inordinate amount of attention to young Liesel, and her loved ones. Could have done well without Death being the teller of stories.

Glad I read it.

Now I’m reading Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Can quite safely say that, 25 pages in, I HATE it. Wordy, rambling, circular sentences of antiquated language about stuff I don’t give two shits about. So look forward to THAT review OK?

Blog 1- The kite runner / Khaled Hosseini.

'Write a blog' they said, 'It'll be fun.' they said. And by 'they' I mean +Daniel, and +David ... Well that's not exactly what they said, but I am pumped full of codeine, and in agonising pain, and that baby has started screaming again so I am just making stuff up. Deal with it.

Lets all read 100 books in a year, and blog about it. Well Ok then! That's easy.
I'm not using their list. They have a lovely list and all, but it seems geared towards a UK audience, and I do not live in the UK. I am using this http://www.dymocks.com.au/Booklovers/101club.aspx list- 'The best 101 books of all time as voted by Dymocks Booklovers', as Dymocks is an Australian bookstore that's been around since 1879 I figured there'd be some Australian titles on it, and the books would have been voted most popular by Australians... of which I am one... There is quite a bit of crossover from my list, and their list, which is good, but I won't have to read any biographies of British persons I have never heard of.

I've already got a bit of a start on this list, but didn't bother to blog (Well what's wrong with a Facebook status update to illustrate progress I ask you?), but apparently I must blog, so here I am... blogging.

The Kite Runner I finished reading yesterday, so I'll start there, and call it 'book one', because it's the first one I have bothered to blog. I expect I'll be playing catchup for a while with the blogging.

The thing about reading through a list of most popular reads (well there's a couple of things) is that:-

 a) you'll get a fairly eclectic collection of diverse themes and random genre leaps, which is fantastic. Makes you read stuff you would not normally have bothered with, stretches your brain, shoves stuff into it you normally wouldn't have considered.

b) you'll likely get terribly confused as to why the f@#k THAT book is popular. 'Popular' does not always mean 'good'. I mean; just look at 50 shades of Grey!... Which I will need to blog about at some point *sigh.

There are lots of reasons why a book becomes popular, and they are not always 'good' reasons. However THIS book; The Kite Runner, is here for a very good reason, so you should all read it. Do it now, I'll wait...

I lied, I'm not waiting. I got up and made a cup of tea, and checked my Facebook notifications, but that's about the extent of my patience. 

The blurb on the back of this book is not going to tell you much about what this book is... There's kites in it. Not the kind of kite I would fancy my kids playing with, as there is ground glass involved in the making of the string, and part of the fun seems to involve slicing up your hands and bleeding all over the place and I just wouldn't have that kind of dedication, or the stomach to watch my kids injure themselves on purpose. But I didn't grow up in Afghanistan in the 1970's, and I had a television.

Most of the events of importance in this story happened in Kabul, with the back drop of a build up to war. We all know about the war of which I speak. It is still very much a part of our communal conciousness in the western world. We know what the media tells us about it. This story is told through the eyes and heart of a 12 year old boy who was there. But this story is not about the war. It's about a childhood betrayal, and a chance at redemption; a parental betrayal, and a realisation that a parent is not always exactly the person you thought they were; that everybody lies, and sometimes those lies have profound and far reaching consequences.

It is not a pretty story. It's really quite awful, but thoroughly engrossing, and educational. Not quite sure why our protagonist needed to find God at the end there though- I really didn't get the logic involved in that scenario. But you should all just go read it now really... I won't wait, I've got other books to read and blog about, this is just my first go at it.

Tune in next time, to watch me wax lyrical about... probably 'The book thief'... or if I haven't finished it yet maybe Jane Eyre... I dunno, something...