My Thoughts on Fifty Shades of Grey

Yep. I finally gave in and read Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James. I was curious to see what all the hype was about. Would I fall into the "OMG Christian Grey is sooooo hot and I LOVE these books!!!" camp or the "How the hell did this crap get published" camp? As it turns out, I kind of fell somewhere in the middle.

In case you've been living under a rock, this is what this book is about:

When literature student Anastasia Steele is drafted to interview the successful young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, she finds him attractive, enigmatic and intimidating. Convinced their meeting went badly, she tries to put Grey out of her mind - until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town hardware store where she works part-time.
The unworldly, innocent Ana is shocked to realize she wants this man, and when he warns her to keep her distance it only makes her more desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her - but on his own terms.  Shocked yet thrilled by Grey's singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success – his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving adoptive family – Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a passionate, physical and daring affair, Ana learns more about her own dark desires, as well as the Christian Grey hidden away from public scrutiny.
Can their relationship transcend physical passion? Will Ana find it in herself to submit to the self-indulgent Master? And if she does, will she still love what she finds?

My boyfriend's mom always shares books with the ladies at work - it's like a giant book exchange. I've become their go-to girl for book recommendations and after hearing about their latest smutty book (can't remember what it was...a Bertice Small book, perhaps?) I figured I should mention the phenomenon that was E.L. James' Fifty Shades trilogy. Boy, were they happy about that suggestion. The books quickly made their rounds through the hospital where they work and caused much discussion. She made sure the first instalment was back in her hands for the May long weekend so I was able to read it. And read it I did.

I finished Fifty Shades of Grey in one day. It's not that I couldn't put it down, more that I had to have it finished before I left at the end of the weekend. It also wasn't a difficult book to read. I can see why many people have said that it's absolutely awful but I didn't find myself bothered by the writing quality. I didn't pay much attention to the quality of Twilight either - I read that for the story, not the writing.

Speaking of Twilight - I was constantly looking for comparisons between the vampire series and Ana and Christian's story. I knew that Fifty Shades started as a fan fiction and I can definitely see some similarities. Controlling bad boy? Check. Male best friend who's in love with the heroine? Check. (PS did she really have to call him Jose and make him Hispanic? Um, Jacob who's Native? Too similar for me) Takes place in Washington? Check. Naive, clumsy, "average" heroine? Check. Hero who had a tough upbringing, was adopted, and has adopted siblings? Check. Need I go on? Even though there are tons of similarities, many people could read Fifty Shades and not see any connections. Also, I thought it was...amusing? interesting?...that I wasn't in love with Christian. I don't really see his appeal, nor do I see Edward's appeal. I just find it interesting to note how the two series are so similar yet can stand alone quite easily to those who haven't read the other.

I can't complete this post without mentioning the erotic aspect of this book. Yes, there's a lot of sex. Is that all it is? No. There is a storyline there (even if some people will tell you that it's horribly written). It just so happens that Grey has a sexual fetish that factors heavily into his relationship with Ana. Nothing really shocked me - and I'm not sure what that says about me, perhaps I'm desensitized with all that stuff "kids these days" are seeing on TV? - but there were a couple of scenes that made me exclaim "WTF?!?" (If you've read it you probably know exactly what I'm talking about). It's not for everyone, that's for sure but it didn't really bother me at all.

Like I said, I fell somewhere in the middle of the "thought it was amazing" and "thought it was awful" scale. Did I enjoy reading it? Sure. I don't think I wasted my time. Did I think everyone and their mother should read it? No, not really. It's definitely a personal choice as many people would be mighty offended by the content. I can also tell that I wasn't that into it because I finished the first book almost a month ago and have little desire to read book #2 (Fifty Shades Darker, by the by). I'll eventually get around to finishing the series because I am curious to see how it wraps up. And yes, I'll probably watch the movie when it's released.

So, fellow readers, what did you think of Christian Grey? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Happy reading :)

Just Finished: Overbite

Ah, vampires. Every few years it seems like they take over pop culture with their fangs and mysterious ways. To me, it seems as though the latest obsession has stemmed from Twilight and tons of teenagers are keeping the love alive for these creatures of the night. I've read Twilight and am not afraid to admit it but it wasn't the vampire storyline that really drew me to the series. (Actually, I read the series based on a ton of girls telling me that I needed to read it when I was still working at the bookstore) Anyway, vampires have never really done much for me so it may seem slightly surprising that I've Meg Cabot's vampire series. Insatiable, which came out in June 2010, was the first novel and Overbite, released just this past summer, was the second (and final) novel.

Here's the (long-ish) synopsis of Overbite  from Goodreads:

Meena Harper has a special gift, but it's only now that anyone's ever appreciated it. The Palatine Guard — a powerful secret demon-hunting unit of the Vatican — has hired her to work at their new branch in Lower Manhattan. With Meena's ability to predict how everyone she meets will die, the Palatine finally has a chance against the undead.
Sure, her ex-boyfriend was Lucien Antonescu, son of Dracula, the prince of darkness. But that was before he (and their relationship) went up in flames. Now Meena's sworn off vampires for good ... at least until she can prove her theory that just because they've lost their souls doesn't mean demons have lost the ability to love.
Meena knows convincing her co-workers — including her partner, über-demon-hunter Alaric Wulf — that vampires can be redeemed won't be easy ... especially when a deadly new threat seems to be endangering not just lives of the Palatine, but Meena's friends and family as well.
But Meena isn't the Palatine's only hope. Father Henrique — aka Padre Caliente — New York City's youngest, most charming priest, has also been assigned to the case.
So why doesn't Meena — or Alaric — trust him?
As she begins unraveling the truth, Meena finds her loyalties tested, her true feelings laid bare ... and temptations she never even imagined existed, but finds impossible to resist.
This time, Meena may finally have bitten off more than she can chew.

Wondering why I've read these vampire stories if I'm not really a fan? Because I love Meg Cabot. Always have and likely always will. I love that she writes several kinds of books and for all age groups as well (check out this impressive list of novels!) I picked up Insatiable at the library one day and enjoyed it so when I saw Overbite (again at the library) I had to read it to find out what happened to Meena, Lucien, and Alaric, along with the large cast of supporting characters.

I absolutely devoured Overbite (Yes, pun intended. Though I admit it was a fairly bad pun...). It was one of those novels that had a lot of action going on but still managed to have a good story to it as well. What I really liked about it was the historical tidbits woven into the storyline. Cabot has an author's note at the end of the novel where she explains that some of the things in the novel (the river, Palentine Guard, and so on) were based on myths and actual historical reports. I really like when novels take bits of information from history and weaves it into the fictional plot.

Apparently these novels are a modern take on Dracula. Since I've never read Dracula I can't really comment on the connections but I'd be very interested in some insights. Can anyone help me out? Amusing aside - while I was reading Overbite last week, two people I follow on Twitter were reading Dracula. Quite the coincidence! Ah - some very scientific Wikipedia research has led me to discover that it's basically only the names (Mina Harker/Meena Harper) and the fact that Lucien is Dracula's son that connects Meg Cabot's novels to the classic. Huh. Well there you have it.

I don't think I liked Overbite as much as Insatiable (and judging by all of the less than stellar Goodreads reviews, I'm not the only one) but I would still recommend the series to anyone who is looking for a good book with drama, mystery, a love triangle, and a fantasy element. They also might be a good recommendation for those Twilight Moms out there. You know the ones - they've read all the books, seen the movies, and are just as obsessed with Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner as their daughters are. This is one of those books that, for me, was an easy read but wasn't as light as my normal go-to reading.

I'd love to hear from any others who have read these books - what did you think? What about those of you who've heard of them and aren't reading them - why not?

Happy Reading! :)

Vacation Reads Challenge: A Year in Europe

Bonjour! I've finished my fifth read for the Vacation Challenge hosted, in part, by Ruby's Reads. I decided to read A Year in Europe by Rachel Hawthorne because it took place in three major European cities - London, Paris, and Rome. I would love to visit any of these cities, especially London and Paris.

Let's start off with the synopsis from Goodreads:

MEET THE GIRLS of A Year in Europe, a collection of three interconnecting novels about the adventures of traveling abroad.
Robin: Her junior year abroad in London takes a surprising turn when she falls for British hottie Kit.
Dana: Paris is the City of Love, and Dana's on a mission to find a gorgeous French boyfriend.
Carrie: She's crazy about Antonio, her Italian dream guy. If Carrie tells him the truth about her American heritage, she might lose him forever.
A Year in Europe. Three unforgettable stories. One unforgettable journey.

Overall, I thought this was a fun read. It was actually kind of nice to read about teenage girls who just wanted to have their first boyfriend instead of reading about women who are looking to jump into bed with someone or a teenage girl who wants to become immortal *cough Twilight cough*. I have to admit that I kept thinking, why are these girls so obsessed with getting a boyfriend and worrying about whether boys like them? Partway through Dana's story I realized that my friends and I used to act like Robin, Dana, and Carrie when we were 16. After that, I put my 16 year old self in their shoes and started to enjoy the book a little more.

I liked that the novel was based around the girls going abroad for a year and living and learning in another country. This is something that I never would have done myself in high school, since I was pretty quiet and liked staying close to home. I could really understand the tough emotions the girls found themselves having while they were away from their hometown, friends, and family. However, I couldn't quite understand why they were so clueless in their new cities. Carrie was the only one who had no problem where she was because her father's Italian and she's fluent in the language. Robin and Dana, on the other hand, had some difficulties - and Robin was only going to London! She had no idea that the "tube" meant the subway and the "boot" meant the trunk of a car. Maybe I'm judging too harshly, but I'm pretty sure I had a rough idea of the most common English lingo when I was their age. I do applaud Dana for heading to a country where she is not fluent in the language though - I can't imagine how difficult that would have been!

England is one of my top dream travel destinations (Scotland, Ireland, and Australia are also up there) so I was definitely most envious of Robin and her year abroad. I'd love to go to Paris as well, but since I'm nowhere near fluent in French, it would be a little more challenging. I took French up until grade 10 (one year past the mandatory French classes us Canadian kids have to take) but I didn't retain much - just enough to excel at the French questions on Jeopardy! :) Regardless, I would love to travel to Paris sometime in my life.

This novel was a fun read, nice and light for the summer. I would definitely recommend it to teenagers who are looking for a good book to lose themselves in. I've read quite a few of Rachel Hawthorne's books before and I've always enjoyed them. It goes to show that just because you're no longer a teenager doesn't mean you can't enjoy a good YA novel every once and awhile. Especially one that takes you to so many wonderful cities!

Happy travels...er...reading, everyone! :)

Just Finished: "A Discovery of Witches"

I know it's been awhile since I posted but life has been CRAZY! Not to worry though, I am back and do I ever have a great book for you to read. I just finished A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness and it was so incredibly fantastic that I don't think there are enough adjectives to describe how amazing it is. Right now it is definitely the front runner for my favourite book of 2011.

I happened upon a review of this book in an issue on Entertainment Weekly, which you can find here. I'm usually pretty happy with their reviews and both my mom and I decided to check this one out. Boy, oh boy, are we ever glad that we did.

Here's the synopsis from Chapters:

A richly inventive novel about a centuries-old vampire, a spellbound witch, and the mysterious manuscript that draws them together.
Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery; so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery sets a fantastical underworld stirring, and a horde of daemons, witches, and vampires soon descends upon the library. Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.
Debut novelist Deborah Harkness has crafted a mesmerizing and addictive read, equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense. Diana is a bold heroine who meets her equal in vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont, and gradually warms up to him as their alliance deepens into an intimacy that violates age-old taboos. This smart, sophisticated story harks back to the novels of Anne Rice, but it is as contemporary and sensual as the "Twilight" series-with an extra serving of historical realism.

Both this synopsis and the EW article compare this book to the Twilight Saga and I have to agree with them. I hate to do it because there's just this sort of stigma associated with Twilight (and as someone who is slightly older than the target audience and as a former bookseller, I've heard and told all sorts of excuses for reading them) but the comparison really is hard to avoid. I'll put it this way - if you enjoy the idea of Twlight, the vampires, forbidden love, and different types of mythical beings, you'll love A Discovery of Witches. This a grown up version of Meyer's novels with more creatures (witches and daemons instead of werewolves) and an amazing historical aspect. The writing is so incredibly well done and, well, Twilight isn't exactly a literary masterpiece (no matter what those teenyboppers think).

Let me explain why the historical aspect is such a great part of this novel. I wasn't a history major in university and I didn't even take any history classes (and since I saw what my roommates had to deal with, I am sooo glad that I didn't) but I enjoy a good documentary or historical novel every once and awhile. Diana is researching alchemy in an effort to push aside her magical ancestry. She has tenure at Yale so is obviously quite the historian. What makes this kind of neat is that she ends up with a vampire who has personally known some of the greatest minds Diana has been reading about her whole life. I love how amazed Diana gets when she learns Matthew knew someone famous and how she becomes distracted from an original conversation once she finds that out. Can you imagine how cool and completely crazy that would be?

There are a ton of secondary characters but Harkness does a great job of giving just enough background information on each of them so they are really three dimensional characters, just like Diana and Matthew. It is a massive book and each page is used to its fullest with descriptions and explanations cleverly written so as not to give too much away at once.

This novel had just the right amount of magic, suspense, romance, and action all wrapped up in its 592 pages. I was so hooked on this book that I couldn't put it down and I was constantly thinking about it when I wasn't reading it. One of the best things about this novel is that it is the first of a trilogy. Of course, I am going to go crazy waiting for the next book in the All Souls Trilogy (it comes out sometime in 2012) but at least there will be a next one!

Overall, I am completely and utterly in love with this book. I love novels that have a bit of witchcraft (as long as they don't venture into the fantasy category) and this one was just about perfect. It created a world where not only witches live, but also vampires and daemons, all with their own unique powers. The regular stereotypes of each creature are present, but with Harkness wisely puts her own twist on the powers and defining features of each. I highly recommend this book. It is well worth the price in hardcover, but buy the e-book or check it out from the library if you really don't want to spend that much money. I would love to hear from anyone else who has read this one or who knows someone who has read it. Were they as enthralled with is as much as me? Let me know!

Another weekend is done and I happily spent most of it reading this amazing novel. Please please please give it a try as it is just so fantastic. Until next time, happy reading :)

Sharing the Love

Sorry for the delay in posts, but here's another novel sized one for your reading pleasure :)

I absolutely love being able to get someone hooked on one of my favourite authors or books. One of the two jobs I have is at a bookstore and this allows me to recommend what I like to customers, which is probably my favourite part of the job.

I've been recommending books to people for years. I worked at my town's public library all through high school and that led to me becoming the unofficial book loaner/recommender among my friends. It hasn't stopped, and I love it. I suppose it's not really surprising that this happened - since I was working with books all the time, I was always learning what was new and being exposed to books that my friends and I may never have found.

Just the other week I had a conversation with a friend about how we happened upon one of our favourite authors - Sarah Dessen. We've been reading her for the longest time and still get excited when she writes a new books (May 2011! Can't wait!) After thinking about it for awhile, my friend realized that I had just found one of her books (Someone Like You, I'm pretty sure) at the library one day and decided to give it a shot. Boy, am I happy I did. I now own all but three of her books (store discounts are a wonderful thing) and have lent them to several of my friends. Just this past summer I got a coworker hooked on them too, which was great. She devoured the six books I have in about two weeks. (We booksellers are speedy readers!) By the way, if you don't know who Sarah Dessen is, maybe you remember the movie Mandy Moore and Trent Ford starred in a few years back, How to Deal. That movie is actually based on both Someone Like You and That Summer, Dessen's first two novels. By the way, Sarah Dessen has her own blog, which is a great read, but maybe just for those who are totally obsessed with her books :)

The same friend who got hooked on Dessen with me was also the one who was refusing to read Twilight a few summers ago. Now, I am one of the first ones to say that it is not the best writing and yes, Edward is quite stalkerish and creepy, but...the story itself is pretty addictive. I must also point out that I read all the books before the first movie came out and made teenage girls crazy. Ok, crazier. I had had a lot of girls coming into the store telling me how great the series was, so as soon as I was done school for the summer I decided to check them out of the library (yes, I work in a bookstore but I still love my library). Twilight sat on the table for two weeks before I got around to reading it, and once I did, that was it. I read the next two in quick succession and only had to wait about a month for the fourth. Sometime during this summer, I brought up the series with my friend who immediately said that she really didn't think that she'd like them. Knowing her taste in books, I insisted that she would. Her cousin and other best friend had told her that she would like them, but since I was her own personal librarian, she trusted my judgement and gave them a try. Yes, she now loves them too.

My final sharing story involves another fantasy series, Percy Jackson. This was another case of having customers (young kids and parents alike) rave about the books. I started to really notice it right before the movie came out, so once again I vowed to read them as soon as school was finished. I borrowed them from a coworker and was instantly hooked. No matter that these books are really targeted to ten year old boys. I am a twenty three year old female and I absolutely love them. I encouraged parents to buy them for their kids and had in depth conversations with eight year olds about Percy's world. (Check them out if you've never heard of them.) I had talked about them so much at work with the other people who had read them, that one girl gave me the first three as a going away present. Which I immediately lent to my mom's boyfriend so he could read them too. He's a huge fan of Harry Potter so I knew he would love these too...score another point for me, because he did. I also lent them to my sister's boyfriend at the time because he was about to go away to school for classics. I knew he'd love them because of the Greek myths (which is one of the coolest parts to this series) and he liked them so much that we actually got all five for him for Christmas.

I think part of the reason I'm pretty good at my job (if I do say so myself) is that I love to talk about books and what I like and try and figure out what other people might like too. It's like a puzzle, as long as the customer wants to play along and isn't looking for a book for their grandmother but they have no idea what she reads. Argh. Sorry. Fellow booksellers will know that frustration well. Anyways, getting people hooked on books is a lot of fun for me and I'm glad that my friends give me the chance to do that. They let me ramble on about books and trust me to buy/find ones that they'll love. A big thank you to them. And a thank you to you, whoever is reading this and made it through the whole post!

That's all for now...check back soon for another post :)