Sunday, August 26, 2012

50 Shades of Mediocrity

The reading list of 2012 continues.


#23 The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Pötzsch, translated by Lee Chadeayne. Historical fiction and a not bad Salem-witch-trial-type mystery. Reminiscent of Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth but shorter. I'll probably read the others in the series.

#24.  Yes, I fell for it.  A co-worker told me that I just had to get the books and told me how much I would love them.   I had  "Looked Inside" of 50 Shades of Grey a while back and didn't find the first two chapters promising, but on Trish's insistence I downloaded it yesterday morning.  Well, that's $9.99 and a day of my life that I'll never get back.   Fortunately I did not spring for the trilogy.  With my apologies for those who are enamoured: the characters are unbelievable, the writing is mediocre at best, and the sex scenes go on for far too long.  How could the guy be running a multi-national company at the age of 27 if he spends all of his time chasing after the girl (not to mention what he does when he catches her)?  Too much sex, not enough psychology.

In the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde there is a paragraph:

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.  Books are well written, or badly written.  That is all.
On the other hand, it is one of the few books that will no doubt make a better movie.  The characters are already gorgeous paper dolls with no depth.   And the sex . . . voyeurism is better when there is actual viewing.