Book Review

This past week, I mentioned on Facebook that I had finished listening to an audio version of War and Peace, and Joel seemed to think I should write a book review.  So here's a book review, but not of War and Peace.  Instead, I started reading the second book in the Fifty Shades of Grey series, this one called Fifty Shades Darker.

Previously, I reviewed the first book.  I was not a big fan.  To recap, the Shades of Grey series is fan fiction, a sort of homage to the Twilight series.  George Takei brilliantly summed up the theme of the Twilight series this way:  [Said in a whiny voice] "Does my boyfriend like me?"  E. L. James captures this idea all too well, and it just isn't a subject that holds my interest.

Let's be fair; there are sex scenes, and that's why the books are so popular.  But just like the movie Nine and a Half Weeks, even sex scenes will only get you so far.  In between, the story makes you want to give up.  Which I did.

At the end of the last book, our heroine Anastasia and her kinky boyfriend Christian, who is the most attractive man on the planet, a self-made (of course) billionaire, a pianist and helicopter pilot, and twenty-something I think, had a dramatic and heart-wrenching (for them -- I didn't care) breakup.  So the first thing this book needs to do is get them back together.  So Christian calls Anastasia, and she agrees to see him again.  Hmm, maybe that breakup wasn't all that heart-wrenching for them either.

They have sex at least a couple more times (I really should keep better count), then Christian takes Anastasia to have her hair done, facial, makeup, whatever.  Only this doesn't work out so well, because the famous Mrs. Robinson is there, the older woman who lured Christian into his kinky world of sex (and yes, Mrs. Robinson is a reference to The Graduate, not the woman's actual name.)  Christian didn't know that Mrs. Robinson would be there, because although she owns the place, she is usually not there.  Anyway, Anastasia is furious and storms out, and is angry that Christian is such a typical stupid man and that he doesn't understand why she is angry.

I don't understand either.  I suppose it is true to Twilight, again, to conjure up conflict in ways that seem contrived and artificial, so good job there.  But he took her to a place where he did not expect Mrs. Robinson to be, but Mrs. Robinson was there, so damn stupid thoughtless man, of course she's upset.  Only...why again?  So I stopped on page 100 or so, and I'm not going back.  The only reason I did (OK, and the sex) is that it was more than a year ago that I read the last one, so the pain had dulled with time.