Why I (Probably) Won't Read 50 Shades of Grey

I know, I'm a little behind - 50 Shades of Grey was like, sooooo last month, right? Well, anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I'm always behind the latest craze. Trendsetter is not a word anyone who knows me would use to describe me.

The other day, the Hubs and I were sitting out on the deck, while the kidlets played in the pool. He was reading Stacia Kane's Sacrificial Magic and I had my nose buried in my Kindle, reading A Night Like This. I don't know how it came up, but he asked me if I was going to buy 50 Shades (okay, that's it, I'm not typing it out any more. It will heretofore be known as FSOG.)

No. I don't plan on it. I have no desire to read it. Ever. I've heard the writing is awful and the oh-so-steamy love scenes? Yeah, not so much. Vanilla at best is what I've heard. And I'm not about to part with my hard-earned buckage to read something that I've yet to hear anything good about. I have nothing against erotic romance, or even straight up erotica. I've got quite a few really good ero-rom books on my Kindle. I'm not much into Erotica itself, but if someone recommended something, I'd probably read it. Just to see.

But FSOG is not on any TBR pile in my house. Not in paper. Not in digital. I have no plans whatsoever to rethink that. My TBR pile is big enough (you should see my Amazon wishlist. My husband goes pale when he sees the number of books on it. :D) and I'm not about to add something I really don't care about reading.


Then there's the whole "It began as Twilight fan fiction." I have nothing against fan fiction. Hell, I wrote it before I even knew what fan fiction was. But I'm not paying for glorified fan fiction (not to mention, the author's whole diss of the fan fiction writers and readers kind of burned me a little. You shouldn't really forget where you come from and you certainly should never dismiss the people who read your work, loved your work, and helped you go from self-published fan fiction writer to commercially-published novelist.) when I've yet to read anything positive about it. And I've never read Twilight, nor do I ever plan to read it, either. I don't care about Bella and Edward, nor do I care about Christian and Anastasia. I do care about my free time, though, and I'm not going to waste it on this book.

So maybe I'm missing out on some great literary treasure. I don't think I am, but if it turns out otherwise, that's okay. Somehow, I don't think I'll mind all that much,

Summer Reading

Last November, as many of you know, I broke down and got a Kindle and promptly fell in love. Since then, I've read something in the neighborhood of 30 books. I don't know if I'd read 30 books in the five years preceding my Kindle. Back before I had kids, I would read about a book a week, but since then? Maybe a book a year. I didn't realize how much I missed reading until I bought that Kindle and I've been making up for lost time since.

Over the winter, I tackled Sabrina Jeffries 'Hellions of Halstead Hall' series. I'm current on Stacia Kane's Downside Series. And now it's time to restock the Kindle with a new series.

A few years ago (okay, about 6-maybe even 7) I bought Julia Quinn's It's in His Kiss. And to be honest, I never finished it. I'm not even sure I made it five chapters before tossing it aside. That summer (and I know it was summer. I just can't remember if I was pregnant with the Boy or if he was a baby) no matter which author it was, I just couldn't get into the book. I tried to read A Loving Scoundrel by Johanna Lindsey, two or three Eloisa James books, and the Julia Quinn. I don't think I finished one of them and I don't know why.

Fast forward to last summer. I was in CVS and saw Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn and, on impulse, grabbed it. While the kids played in the pool later that afternoon, I devoured that book. It was awesome! But it was, I'm ashamed to admit, the only book I read last summer. Bad me.

Then I got my Kindle and you know the rest...

Two weeks ago, after finishing the last Hellions book (A Lady Never Surrenders, which was pretty good, by the way. Sabrina Jeffries was one I hadn't read and ended up with the first Hellions book on impulse), I needed something else for the shore. You have to have a book at the shore. And I found A Night Like This, by Julia Quinn. It's the second of the Smythe-Smith series. Devoured that in the two days I was at the shore. The next one won't be out until next spring, though. Wah. :(

But now I'm hooked on Julia Quinn and that's good because I plan to read her entire Bridgerton series (I believe this is the series that introduces us to the Smythe-Smiths) which is 8 books long. I started The Duke and I last night and I'm already a third of the way into it. And that's how I plan to spend my summer - reading Julia Quinn. Oh, and outlining a book I plan to write come fall. And that's pretty much it.

So, what's on your reading list for this summer?

Spring?

So where did spring go? Two weeks ago, it was eighty degrees and bee-yoo-tee-ful. Today? It's forty-three degrees and awful. What happened to spring and who do I have to bribe to get the bee-yoo-tee-ful weather back?

Ahem

Anyhoo, I'm still working on the fourth McKenzie book (still untitled, which sucks because I hate not having a title for it and I hate that I can't think of one. Grrr...), but this weekend I'm not writing anything. I'm going to read instead.

I bought The Hunger Games trilogy for my daughter. She read the first book in about a day, and just started Catching Fire. Tonight, I'll give in to the peer pressure and start it tonight. She loved The Hunger Games, so I have pretty high expectations for it as well.

Yesterday, when I went to get her the second and third books in the series, I found a copy of S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. I loved this book when I was a teenager (my original copy of it had the cast from the movie on the cover. I wonder if I still have it somewhere...) so I bought it again. Read it in about three hours and although I still loved it, it struck me as being a little sadder than I remembered. There is so much tragedy in it that I didn't remember, and it seemed to me the book was a lot more powerful than when I was 13 or 14 and reading it for the first time. But it was still great.

Oh, I'm also reading Stacia Kane's newest, Sacrificial Magic. It's good so far, but I still have to reread some of the dialog. I don't get why some characters speak normally and others seem to have their own form of English, but it's a minor annoyance for me and doesn't really ruin the read.

So, I've got a nice quiet, word-filled weekend ahead and I'm looking forward to it.

Another Monday

So I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, trying to find a few new things to blog about (which isn't easy. Nothing really grabs me as a topic and if it doesn't grab me, I can't blog about it without being all rambling-like.)

Yesterday, on at the Absolute Write Water Cooler, someone posted a question about whether or not kids still ready Beverly Cleary. My daughter's read all the Ramona books (and maybe one or two of the Henry Huggins books) and I certainly read most of them (not her more recent ones, but pretty much all the earlier ones, as far as I know.) And as I was writing my response, I remembered that I loved her young adult books as well. I had Fifteen, Jean and Johnny, and The Luckiest Girl as well as her children's books.

So in a fit of nostalgia I went to Amazon and found Kindle versions of those three books and last night, curled up with a bit of my childhood. :D It's so funny that despite the fact that they are a little dated (the original pub dates are 1959 for Fifteen and Jean and Johnny, and 1958 for The Luckiest Girl) they are still great books. I read Fifteen and Jean and Johnny last night, and will read the last one today, but it says something about an author when you can ready their books fifty years (fifty years!!!) after their original release and still enjoy them. Like I said, they're a little dated - the language is a bit more formal and the clothing is different and it's really funny to read about a 15-year old girl waiting for her mother to get off the phone because she's tying up the line. Especially in this day and age where call-waiting exists and everyone has a cell phone and text, and all. In Fifteen, Stan Crandall buys a Model-A Ford to fix up for his first car. A Model-A.

photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Could you imagine a YA novel today where the hero picks up the heroine in a Model-A? But despite the datedness, the story held up and I loved reading it last night as much as I did nearly 30 years (EEEK!!) ago.

I may end up raiding my daughter's Ramona series when I'm finished. And who knows? Judy Blume may be next.