By Genevieve Mills–
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past year, you’ve probably heard of E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey.” And chances are, you’ve also heard a joke about it. A couple months ago, I decided that in order to make fun of “Fifty Shades” with authority, I should actually read the book. Part of me was saying, “No, don’t do it! Everyone says it’s horribly written and you are too much of an English junkie to handle that without a mental breakdown!” and “It started as ‘Twilight’ fan-fiction! No good can come of ‘Twilight’ fan-fiction!” But most of me was curious. I figured I might as well give it a try. How bad could it be?
Very bad. So bad that I managed to stop banging my head against the keyboard — it was the kindle version because I can’t have people see me reading this nonsense — every time I saw a grammatical error or ridiculous word choice and started to laugh at the antics of Anastasia Steele, the protagonist — a term I use loosely, as it usually describes a character with an actual personality — of the novel, and her sex buddy Christian Grey, a man who James describes — several times, in case readers haven’t gotten the symbolism in the title yet — as “fifty shades of f—ed up.”
While laughing slightly hysterically — I might’ve injured myself on my keyboard — I figured I’d share my laughter/pain with my friends via Twitter, and someone — who will probably get a demotion after it prints — decided these tweets were worth sharing via the newspaper, and so here we are. It’s a book review, kind of.
And yes, I did read “Twilight” too. I was a freshman in high school. It was a dark time in my life; I’m not proud of it.
