I’ve decided to read the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy by E.L.
James for my next foray into reviewing books for my blog. Although, for the
record I might read a different book before I read Fifty Shades Darker since I did read the first several chapters of
this book several months ago, and I can already tell that this book is pretty
bad, and I don’t know if I want to subject myself to reading the entire trilogy
all at once instead of taking a break between each of the books. For the
record, I’m fairly familiar with what happens in all three of the books since
I’ve read a lot of Jenny Trout’s chapter by chapter recaps of the entire
trilogy (Jenny Reads | Trout Nation). If you’ve never read them, I strongly recommend checking out
Jenny’s recaps because they are incredibly hilarious, yet very insightful. I’m
going to state right upfront that once I finish reading the book, I won’t be
giving it a final score, because after reading Jenny Trout’s recaps for most of
the chapters in this book, I think that even giving this book a 1 out of 10
would be too generous of a rating, and I’m sure that by the time I finish
reading this book, I’ll have already ranted about the book more than enough, so
officially giving the book a 0 for a final rating would just be beating a dead
horse. That being said, here are my thoughts on the first chapter of the book.
After reading this chapter
again in order to write this post, along with chapters two and three, which I
read several months ago, I definitely don’t like Ana Steele as a fictional
character, at all, and reading the first chapter again in order to write this
post definitely didn’t change my opinion of Ana for the better. A major pet
peeve of mine is when people are very judgmental about something or someone
that they know very little, if anything about, so as I’ve reflected on my
thoughts of the Fifty Shades of Grey
trilogy, I’ve tried my absolute best to not be too much judgmental of E.L.
James since I’ve never even met her, but I have to admit that’s definitely been
a real struggle for me at this point.
One question that’s really
plagued me when it comes to the Fifty
Shades of Grey trilogy is whether or not the reader is supposed to actually
like or care about Ana as a character, or Christian for that matter. Ana acts
rather insufferable, self-centered and unlikable pretty much as soon as the
book begins and she’s getting ready to go interview Christian Grey for her
college’s school newspaper because her best friend Kate, who’s the editor of
the school newspaper, got sick and therefore can’t go interview Christian
herself. After complaining to the reader about Kate for about a page and a
half, she then all of the sudden says that Kate is apparently her very best friend
in the whole world. One thing that really bothered me about Ana in the first
chapter is on page four where it says, “I ignore my pang of unwelcome sympathy.”
as she’s complaining about Kate and how she has a paper to finish, final exams
to study for and that she also has work later that day, while outwardly acting
like she’s willing to go interview Christian for Kate.
Based on the first chapter
alone, I definitely like Kate more than Ana despite the fact that the book is
told from Ana’s point of view and Ana complained about Kate pretty much every
time she was mentioned throughout the entire chapter. Plus, if I was in Ana’s
shoes I would probably be pretty excited about getting the opportunity to meet
a rich billionaire who donates money to the college that I attend instead of
bitching about it like Ana did. Sure, the reason Ana was given the opportunity
to meet Christian Grey was because Kate got sick and couldn’t do the interview
herself, but I still think that she should be more excited about the whole
thing.
Maybe it’s a case of bad
writing, but I think E.L. James wants the readers to like both Ana and
Christian, only she has failed miserably at accomplishing that goal as far as I
can tell at this point, if that even was her goal to begin with. When it comes
to what TV shows I like, I watch A LOT of TV shows, so it’s pretty much
impossible for me to pick just one TV show as my favorite. However, when it
comes to picking a favorite comedy TV show, I can say that my favorite comedy
is without question It’s Always Sunny in
Philadelphia. While all of the characters on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are all pretty immoral, unlikable
and sociopaths to varying degrees, the writers for the show have done a really
good job of writing them that way, and yet the viewers can still like the
characters, think that they are funny and just love the show in general. Sadly,
I don’t think that having Ana be an incredibly unlikable person that the
readers can still like and care about is what E.L. James was going for when she
wrote this book and the trilogy as a whole.
When I read the first
chapter for the first time several months ago, I honestly didn’t think that
James was nearly as bad of writer as I was expecting her to be given all of the
criticism that I had heard about the Fifty
Shades trilogy at that point. However, the first chapter as a whole is still
rather tedious and boring. Even after I got to the point in the chapter where
Ana and Christian meet for the first time, the book is as stimulating as a can
of room temperature Mountain Dew that’s gone flat. The entire interview is
pretty much nothing but clumsy exposition that really breaks whole “show, don’t
tell” rule of writing. We learn a little bit about Christian as a character,
but not very much, because I personally feel like Christian is kind of going
around in circles when it comes to talking about what he thinks has made him
such a successful business man, and I feel like some of his answers are also
rather cryptic, which I suppose could add some intrigue to a character in a
story in some cases, but E.L. James just fails at making that work here when
Ana is interviewing Christian. Plus, the way that Ana stumbles into Christian’s
office and makes a fool of herself when they first meet before they actually
start the interview, as well as Christian’s reaction to the whole fiasco was
one of the ways that I could tell that this book started out as a piece of Twilight fan fiction.
As if I didn’t need more
reasons to hate Ana before I got to the point in the chapter where she meets
Christian, the part of the chapter when she’s interviewing him made me hate her
even more. She’s openly hostile towards Christian throughout the entire
interview and repeatedly insults him by saying that he’s a control freak and
that perhaps the only reason he ended up becoming so rich and successful was
simply due to luck rather than hard work.
The part of the interview
that upset me the most was when she asked Christian if he’s gay. Although, in
Ana’s defense, asking Christian if he’s gay was pretty much Kate’s doing since
it was on the list of questions that Kate gave her for the interview. The
reason why it upset me so much was because I was basically bullied into
admitting that I’m attracted to men when I was in the ninth grade. Despite
that, it wasn’t until I was in college that I finally came to terms with the
fact that I’m bisexual, rather than simply being attracted men. After being
bullied in high school simply because of my sexual orientation, I’ve always had
a lot of sympathy for celebrities and public figures that have to deal with the
media and the general public constantly gossiping and badgering them about
whether or not they’re gay. As far as I’m concerned, if somebody who’s in the
public spotlight is gay or bisexual, it should be their choice and their choice
alone whether or not they want to publically come out, and not some nosy news
reporter’s decision, but I digress.
Despite the fact that Ana
was acting rather rude to Christian the entire time they were talking, I think
that Christian handled the whole situation a lot better than Ana did. Reading
this book so far has really caused me to think of a lot of questions that I
would love to ask E.L. James in order to have a better understanding of the
book. The main questions that I find myself wanting to ask James over and over
again are “What were you trying to accomplish with (Insert name of character
from the book)?” and “What were you going for with this particular part of the
book?”
The reason why I want to ask
James those questions is because at this point in time, I’m not entirely sure she
truly accomplished anything with the characters in the book or with the story
itself that she might or might not have been attempting to do. This book is
just so bad, that it’s really hard for me to not automatically want to view her
as a really fucked up woman with deeply troubling emotional and psychological
issues even though I’ve never even met her before. For all I know, E.L. James
could be a very nice person.
I also constantly find
myself thinking about how this book originally started out as a piece of Twilight fan fiction. Personally, I’ve
never really been interested in writing fan fiction of my own or reading fan
fiction before, but being someone who does like the Twilight saga books, I’m completely baffled by the fact that James
decided to have Edward be someone who is into BDSM in her piece of Twilight fan fiction that was apparently
originally called “Master of the Universe”. When I was reading the Twilight series, I always saw Edward as
being someone who seemed incredibly old-fashioned and a real gentleman. It just
seems like too huge of a leap for me to view Edward as someone who would ever have
any interest in BDSM. Also, when I was reading the Twilight series, I often found Bella at least somewhat annoying.
She especially annoyed the hell out of me in New Moon, and yet no matter how many changes E.L. may or may not
have made to the story when she decided to publish “Master of the Universe” as Fifty Shades of Grey, I can’t help but
think that she somehow managed to make Bella a gazillion times more annoying
and unlikable in her story.
While it was blatantly
obvious that Ana’s incredibly attracted to Christian, I didn’t necessarily feel
like Christian was attracted to Ana when she was interviewing him. Instead, I
got the impression that he was simply somewhat amused by her nervous behavior,
while also trying to be very patient and polite with her throughout the chapter
despite how blatantly rude and insulting she was towards him. I really hate to
admit it, but after I finished reading the first chapter the first time several
months ago, I found myself thinking that Christian Grey kind of seemed like a
charming guy and I briefly felt tempted to write my own piece of Fifty Shades of Grey fan fiction where
Christian Grey wasn’t into BDSM and Anastasia “Ana” Steele was either quickly
killed off at the beginning of the story, or even better, didn’t even exist.
However, after thinking about doing that for about ten minutes, I decided not
to since it would be a piece of fan fiction inspired by an incredibly crappy
book series (Fifty Shades) that was
originally fan fiction based on a rather mediocre book series (The Twilight Saga), and that doing that
would most likely just end up being a part of an endless cycle of bad writing.
All things considered, while
the writing for the first chapter of Fifty
Shades of Grey wasn’t nearly as bad as I was originally expecting it to be,
it was definitely a struggle to get through reading it. The main reason why it
was challenging for me to get through reading the first chapter was the fact
that Ana is incredibly unlikable and annoying from the moment the book begins.
Most of the chapter felt like poorly executed exposition, especially the part
of the chapter where Ana is interviewing Christian. That was definitely a
pretty boring way for the reader to be introduced to Christian as a character. Personally,
Christian comes across as a charming and somewhat of a nice guy throughout the interview,
but given everything that I know Christian is going to end up doing throughout
the rest of the book; my opinion of him was pretty much immediately tarnished.
At this point, the only character in this book that I actually like would be
Kate and she was barely in this chapter. This chapter really was somewhat of a
struggle to get through, and yet a part of me is looking forward to reading
more of this book.
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