I was interested in this book when I started hearing about it a few months ago. At last, I thought, some sensible, thoughtful discussions about the whole "Fifty Shades of Grey" pop culture chaos. Well, not really. I read this in one night, and had mixed feelings about it. The first groups of essays,titled Fifty Shades of Erotic Fiction,and Fifty Shades of Romance were essays from various authors and publishers on how they felt about FSoG, how it has changed the face of publishing, why Christian is a stalker, why Christian isn't a stalker, how it's bad, how it's good, and so on. The section titled Fifty Shades of Sex got a bit more interesting for me. "The McDonald's of Lust" by Lois Gresh brought up that old "female Porn" charge that romance fiction got saddled with in the past (again? Really?), but some of the other essays were more thoughtful and complex. Fifty Shades of BDSM contained essays from individuals who were in some way part of the BDSM subculture. These were the essays I was most interested in. These surprised me in that the writers who knew or lived this subculture were not all critical of E.L. James portrayal, which was not very realistic (she did her research of WIKIPEDIA, according to press I've read). The essays continue with Fifty Shades of Writing, Fifty Shades of Fanfiction, and Fifty Shades of Pop Culture. The appendix: Fifty Shades of Reading is a list of fiction and nonfiction, but is problematic in that the books suggested cross all genres. Some are romances, some are erotic romance, and some are hard core erotica, both modern and historical. If you want to study erotic fiction in various historical periods, it's a good basic list. If you liked FSoG and want some more books to read, this list isn't so good for that.
On the whole, while this book was not all I had hoped it would be, I still found it an interesting read. I have added this book to my library's collection as part of my "why we should have romance fiction in the library" collection. (Fifty Shades of Grey is a romance with a bit of BDSM erotica thrown in.) While I felt this book missed out of the "romance" aspects, the explanation of some of the erotica and BDSM elements might be helpful for readers and librarians trying to sort out these "new" genres. Secret: there is all sorts of erotica on library shelves everywhere, we just didn't talk about it. Now the patrons are asking, and we need to pay attention, and know how to do informed readers advisory. (And purchasing. For the love of heaven, know what you're buying.)
I read an advance copy of this book from NetGalley, and the opinions expressed are all my own.
No comments:
Post a Comment