sid | I find this rather alarming

I was just catching up on the July issue of the high IQ society Mensa's Bulletin, which has a book review column. The author of the column, Tom Elliott, reviewed Fifty Shades of Grey. I will quote:

(note: first he reviewed Anne Rice's The Wolf Gift)

Possibly because the above brought to mind Rice's erotic Sleeping Beauty series, I couldn't help but notice the hotly discussed book Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James that's being touted on talk radio and in major newspapers. Yes, both have a definite BDSM slant (more specifically, master/slave), but both are so well written as to have mass appeal. Part of a trilogy, a first work by a TV executive, wife, and mother from West London, 50 Shades tells of Anastasia Steele, a literature student assigned to interview Christian Grey for a campus magazine, and naturally the chemistry instantly sets off an affair that rivals that of The Secretary, Last Tango in Paris, and a host of similarly steamy tales. Regardless of your lifestyle, you'll be captivated, and I predict many of you will echo one reviewer's description of the book as "deeply disturbing, compelling, and completely addicting."

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It's a matter of record that Mensa as a group holds no opinions, and that the Bulletin only contains the opinions of the individual writers. *g*

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mementis

Ugh, the Sleeping Beauty books. Someone should give him the Gor novels to review next, that'll just make the "bad news comes in threes" theme complete.

sid

I'm not familiar with Gor? So I guess I hadn't heard the bad news. *g*

I'm away from my computer right now; I apologize for the terseness, I should have phrased the above better. Gor isn't news, it just strikes me as something that would fit right in, above. Look up "John Norman" and Gor on Wikipedia, there's a really complete overview of that series of books there, and less likely to trigger anything than other web pages about the books might inadvertently do.

Will do!

ETA: Ah, it's sounding familiar now. Someone pointed this Gor stuff out to me previously. I'd just managed to forget it. Maybe I'll try to do so again. *g*

I guess the best thing to say about the Beauty trilogy is that there are many submissive men in it. I like those chapters. ;-)

Edited Date: Aug. 14th, 2012 10:28 pm (UTC)

Heh. Sorry, I didn't mean to set you back from that forgetting task.

And, y'know, ultimately... I don't care who's on their knees. I just have problems with badly-written abusive relationships masquerading as consensual D/s. That's probably an unfair assessment of Sleeping Beauty, though.

I think Beauty's parents did the consenting for her. Which is both ew, and totally dubious. Of course the whole imaginary world was populated with monarchs who merrily sent their sons and daughters off to undergo the same "training" they'd once undergone. Must have made for interesting dinner table conversation when the princes and princesses came home...

lolmac

Dear heavens, you haven't encountered Gor? OMG. That crap probably set BDSM back a century. *cringe*

Now that I've Wiki'd it, it sounds familiar. Someone told me about it previously. Could have been you for all I know!

elaiel

Oh dear. So far I think my favourite review of 50 Shades of Grey (one of the most badly written first two pages I've ever read before giving up) is here:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/340987215

Complete with snark, bitching and awesome GIFs.