In other news, I am was so exhausted last week. I normally do not get jetlag when I fly between San Francisco and New York City, partly because I fly so often, and partly because a three hour time shift doesn’t kill me. But this time, I had the additional complication of a new addiction; reading the first damn romance novel I’ve ever picked up. Ergo, my exhaustion is was amplified times 100, because I’ve I’d stay up all night reading, and then wake up sometime in the middle of the day.
The name of the books my friends, are Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed. If you buy the first book, just go ahead and buy the next two at the same time.
Also, if you do not like reading sex scenes, do not read them. I lost 30 purity points just by reading these books.
The Fifty Shades trilogy is like crack. And I am cracked out. I’m I was not eating well (partly because we’ve we’d yet to go grocery shopping plus the fact that I started reading the books during Passover; we were eating weird concoctions that are destined to become the next generation of matzo brei, which in and of itself is a desperate concoction). I missed all my yoga classes because I’m I was either too tired or reading, to go. And I’m I was drinking coffee so I can could get energy so I stay up so I read so I am was tired in the mornings so I make made some coffee…
*disclosure (and you’ve probably figured this out by now–I started writing this post last week).
The Fifty Shades Trilogy is like a mashup of Clan of the Cave Bear (deflowering virgins and sex scene after sex scene), Thomas Crowne Affair (the glider scene and a male protagonist who is wealthier than Thomas Crowne), Beauty and the Beast (monsters and romance and true love), Twilight (secrets and monsters again), 9 1/2 Weeks (BDSM and sex scene after sex scene), Jane Eyre (secrets and a new form of tortured Mr. Rochester), and The Fountainhead (stalwart and stoic capitalists). It’s a suspense-filled psychological thriller and it’s romance and it’s erotica. It’s formulaic and yet completely addictive featuring the ever-damaged, complex Christian Grey and the ever-spunky, strong Anastasia Steele. Seriously, are these romance novel names, or what? If your name is Anastasia Steele, your life is a romance novel waiting to happen.
The trilogy is an amazing lesson in building a pageturner that keeps readers so intrigued they get sleep deprived. Once I go into Fifty Shades Rehab, I’ll be able to figure out the pieces of the puzzle. (I’m diagramming the novel out as I type–see below for some of my dissection).
80,000 words 