50 shades of Grey Review
I’m waiting for a flight and have a great deal of time. I haven’t blogged in a while so I figure it would be great to do some blogging. I’m typing this on my phone keyboard so please forgive the typos and run on sentences.
I have a good amount of time to myself while I ride BART to and from work. The round trip is a 2 hour commute for me. I try to spend the time being productive or by keeping up with pop culture. I recently decided to pick up the book “50 Shades of Grey”. I was very curious about it since someone I was hanging out with said it reminded him of me. I thought the obvious. I thought that the BDSM in the book made him think of me. But I just finished the last paragraph and now I see how my life my echoes the book in other ways.
The story is a romance between a simple self described “plain” girl and mega billionaire who has secrets and a dark and “perverted” sexual appetite. It takes the reader into the courtship through the point of view of the aforementioned simple and plain girl named Anastasia. Anastasia is an annoying, needy, young, Virgin. Her inexperience makes for some thrilling chase scenes for the romantic inside me. I was utterly infatuated with the courtship in the book. I was utterly bored by the sex once it happened. I learned something very important about myself from reading this. I learned that I like foreplay much more than the actual act of sex which says a lot because I really fucking like sex. I realized my adoration for foreplay after I put the book down for 4 months because I was bored that this Christian Grey guy deflowers our lovely Ana and then I was left thinking “okay, well you can only have her virginity once “. His getting her to give herself to him was the exciting part for me. The actual sex parts were not as exciting.
That’s not to say the sex was boring. It is not. It’s well written and not crude what so ever. It was definitely written FOR women. However, the female submissive (who admits over and over in the book she’s not really a submissive) is not very exciting. I found her annoying, really. If she were my submissive I would have let her go on our third date. She’s not obedient enough for me and I found it difficult to swallow that a man of Christian Greys lifestyle and needs both personal and professional would be willing to put up with so much of her whining. I’m an asshole tho. That’s the difference between me and Christian grey I guess. Well that and I don’t have a helicopter named Charlie tango.
I must admit there were moments where I could sympathize with Anastasia’s insecurities which would lead to her whining. I’ve been in a relationship were I was constantly doubting why someone was with me. I’ve also been in relationships where I felt it was so important to get the person I was in the relationship whom I thought was cold or distant to love me. Some how I felt my love for this person in the relationship would change them and make them happy. And that is what many young girls, including our poor sweet Anastasia, do wrong. We try to change people because we think they must be miserable and we need to “fix” them. And in order to do that we need them to love us the way we love them and if they don’t we get insecure and act a little ( for lack of a better word) crazy.
I applaud the character for trying out new sexual fantasies with her first lover. I was happy to read she even enjoyed some of the spanking if it was too hard. I was a little annoyed by the constant use or words/phrases like “torture” “is he gonna beat me again”. From the very dull descriptions it did not sound like any torture or beating was happening. But I suppose I’ll let it slide because to a girl who has never experienced anything like what she was doing for Christian grey, she may very well perceive it as torture or beating. But then again she also says she liked it and was turned on by it so really not torture or beating but then again it is “beat” into our heads that’s she’s not a submissive. Meh oh well.
With that said, the Bdsm aspect if this first book in the series was not the best part of the book. The best part of the book was seeing a woman realize she was loving someone in the wrong way and her being strong enough to do the hard and right thing.
This book is repetitive and boring at times but over all it’s a good read. I think every woman should read it just to realize you’re not crazy for thinking some of the silly things one thinks when starting a new and very different kind of relationship