In Honor of Banned Books Week...



In honor of Banned Books week, and in honor of extra credit, I have decided to blog about "Fifty Shades of Grey," by E.L. James. It is a banned book because it is sexually explicit and has offensive language. I feel like I need to defend myself for reading such a book, but I will admit, I was curious.

 

Working at the library, I of course heard a lot of hype about this book, but no one would tell me what it was about...just that it was risqué. Our library had not purchased the book yet and I just figured it would be a book that I would have to Interlibrary Loan, or borrow from someone else. To my amazement, my library decided to purchase the book, and boy was I shocked to find that it was not just one book but a trilogy. By this point, someone described the book as S&M, and I thought "Really? I don't know much about this subject. Do I really want to read about it?"

 

I think what finally convinced me to read it was the fact that because we ordered the book at the library, we got a lot of news coverage. This really got people talking and I would get asked on a daily basis if the book was really "that bad." I guess I wanted to be able to tell my opinion, so I put myself on the holds list.

 

Little did I know that with the four ways to get the book (print, audio book, eBook, eAudio Book) we had over 500 holds, and that it stayed that way for over a year. That may not sound like a lot to you, but that is probably 4 or 5 times more holds than we normally get for a book.  

 

So I finally read the book. I was warned that I may want to have a dictionary handy, as I may not know what some of the "terms" meant. I just laughed; but it turned out to be true. I had no idea what the characters were talking about.

 

So what did I think of the book? I won't lie; the first time I read the book I thought it was great-after I got over the sex that seemed to happen on every other page. I thought it took a lot of courage for someone to write such graphic situations and make a story out of it. On the whole, the three stories tell about two people struggling to make their relationship work. And I'm a sucker for happily ever after.

 

I thought I would read the books again, since the shock value was now diminished. After reading it a second time, I still think E.L. James was pretty courageous to write and publish such a book, but I also think the book was poorly written. As I said, I think I was blinded by the shock value of the book the first time. The story takes place in Seattle, and E.L. James did a horrible job of capturing how people talk in the Pacific Northwest. I'm not an expert on the dialect there, but when I was reading the book, I had a hard time remembering these people did not have British accents. I felt she was writing like a British person, but tried to have American slang in it. And the result was not good.

 

I could pick apart this book, but you probably have better things to do than read my ramblings so I will wrap this up. I have a hard time telling you what I thought of this book. Do I regret reading it? No. Did I like it? Yes and no. Again, I think the idea was solid and original, but I also think the delivery came up short. I think there are so many different ways this book could have been written.

 

Stay tuned for another segment.