Mr. Grey and his 50 shades

I am guessing at least half of you reading this have heard of the infamous 50 Shades trilogy. These books, especially the first one, must have been one of the highlights of 2012. I was one of those little obsessed girls that actually got all three books at once! And so I started my journey – the 50 shades journey.

I started reading the first installment from the trilogy ‘50 Shades of Grey’, and I must say I was hooked. Can’t lie. I even tweeted at E. L. James herself letting her know that my 2012 birthday wish was to get my hands on her books, and I did. Being the tech savvy lady that she is, she replied. And my lifetime could not have been made any better at this point.

If you have not read this book or do not mind getting to know about the book before you read it, go ahead. If you do mind, kindly stop reading here. Spoiler alert!

So the first installment gets me hooked because the book is about this gorgeous, young billionaire called Christian Grey that has a “thing” for a naïve, young college student called Anastasia Steele. During the first half of the book, the readers are told that Mr. Grey has a big secret. Now look here, we live in the day and age of vampires so I thought he was a vampire (rather exciting) but no, he is a kinky, handsome bastard.

The book goes on to tell us that he has a Red Room of Pain where all these psychotic and kinky things happen, and how isn’t normal. He is not like any other man. Of course, he is not like any other man. Which man makes you sign a contract with soft and hard limits (when you read the book, you shall understand); which man sends you $14,000 first edition copies of ‘Tess of the d-Ubervilles’; which man flies you in his helicopter to… and the list goes on.

One thing I would commend the author (and team behind this book) for is their marketing. Everyone has heard about this book, and its first installment has sold 5.3 million copies of both the hard copy and e-book in the UK. All 3 books have sold a total of 12 million copies. Global sales of the trilogy are estimated at over 40 million books. Of course, that has nothing on J. K. Rowling’s 450 million books sold worldwide. But look at it this way, E. L. James has sold 40 million copies of three books with basically no story. I call that genius marketing. #Winning!

I keep reading this book, and my conclusion is this book is pornography with a story. If you are looking for a great read, don’t bother with this. Read it because you want to learn something (and I wink!). Let’s just say my birthday is in September and I have only read the first book and half of the second. However, I shall be first in line to watch the movie when it comes out. Not that it matters, my pick for Christian Grey is definitely Ian Somerhalder. He is extremely handsome and already knows how to play a cocky villain – refer to the ‘Vampire Diaries’. My other nominees would be Alexander Skarsgard, Matt Bomer or Ryan Gosling. For Ana Steele, I would pick Emma Stone. She would pull off the geeky, naïve, strong headed college girl. Another contender for this role would be Shailene Woodley. Alls I know is I can’t wait.

50 Shades wall paper