Monday 16 July 2012

Oh Fifty, Fifty, Fifty

Well, my husband is very pleased to know that I've finished the Fifty Shades Trilogy by EL James.  And yknow what?  So am I.  At first I was intrigued - "What's all this about Mummy Porn?!" I wondered.  I'm a mummy...  I'm not going to mention the porn part....  But I thought, okay, so this must be for me.  Right?






Erm, well kinda.  Firstly I didn't like the age of the first character - if she was aiming it at 'mummies' then making the narrator/heroine 22 years old was a bit of a crap move.  I suppose it gave her more of an ability to play on the whole innocence lost theme.  And trust me, that was a big theme, for both Miss. Steele and Mr. Grey.  And that got boring.  Quickly. As did the supposed heroines dumb-ass subconscious and the way she over-thought everything!  Her over-thinking, takes up at least 1/2 the Trilogy.  You've met a rich man who likes a bit of domination - stop whining about it and enjoy it for FFS.  I bloody would!


But that wasn't the bit that bored me the most about the book.  Quite frankly, the sex in this book was a let down.  Kinky fuckery my foot!  It was more vanilla than a tub of soft serve!  And the language the writer used repeatedly was quite frankly childish.  Has this woman had an orgasm?!  It was repetitive and dull.  I don't think any of it particularly turned me on.  Perhaps it was too obvious, too in your face.  I'm sure it has worked wonders for some couple's sex lives - but not mine.  Mainly because my face was buried in it, gripped by the 'other' side of the book.


Because, supposed kinky fuckery aside, I will just say that parts of the Trilogy were pretty gripping.  In a predictable way most of the time, but still, it had me hooked for a week!  I think someone on Twitter hit the nail on the head last week when they advised, "It's not high art, but that's not what everyone wants. It's like a soap, but mucky."  And of course she was totally right.  It hadn't occurred to me until then.  I had been spending a lot of time reading the books and getting somehow offended when people said they thought the books were crap and badly written.  I guess because I felt it was an affront on my own intelligence - that I was thick for enjoying the escapism that the books were offering.


I feel a bit like, you need to read a soap opera of a book sometimes for your brain to recover from the more important stuff that you want to read and absorb.  I'm not going to compare the books directly with Marian Keyes, Lisa Jewell, Sophie Kinsella et al. as the characters and storylines in their books are much richer, if not deeper, but it's the same sort of easy reading escapism offered by the general chick lit genre.


Lets face it, these books aren't exactly ground breaking - erotica and romance fiction has been around for some time now.  Is it the level of kinky fuckery (or perceived level thereof) that has made these books such a hit?  Housewives, used to the most vanillarest of vanilla are suddenly struck by the heady combination of pain for pleasure?  Maybe.  I wonder if Ann Summers light bondage range is seeing a boost in sales.  And M&S silver grey ties for that matter...!


So yes, I think Mucky Soap Opera is probably a good summation of these books.  By the end of the third book, I was totally ready for it to finish.  The third book did have some good gripping stuff in it, but the rest of it was just a bit too predictable for my liking, I think the whole series was, and I think that's one of its biggest failings.  Let's not forget, it all started as a bit of Twilight Fan Fiction, and the author even signs off the Prologue of Fifty Shades Freed in the style of something she's just posted on a forum thread.  And this is where it comes back to the accusations of it being written by a teenager.  


I'm going to let you in on a secret, when I was 15 maybe, a friend and I used to co-write a story.  It was based around us, and two boys that we fancied at the time, it had moderate sex (a subject we knew utterly fuck all about, and looking back, I laugh wholeheartedly at the way we've written about it!!), marriage, houses, babies, holidays, nice cars.  It was total, self-indulgent, fantasy fiction.  And that's pretty much was Fifty Shades is - a story of a boy and a girl, who fall in love, own mad cars, plush houses, yachts, helicopters, have staff, security, shoppers and stalkers and who ultimately, have babies and live happily ever after!  And you have to hand it to the woman - she's sold fucking millions of books, which are basically self-indulgent, mild sexual fantasy that started for her own gratification.  If my friend and I had thought longer and harder about it, maybe we'd be the ones raking it in!


Oh, and as an aside, I have suggested Andy read them.  He's declined, saying he will wait for the film.  If they cast anyone other than Ryan Gosling in it, I may cry!

Life List

So, having fawned over Sarah's Life List  for a little while and laughed and thought, ooh yeah, that sounds fun to most of her entries, I decided to give it a go myself.  Sarah reliably informed me that she saw the Mighty Life List over on Mighty Girl's blog and she believes this to be the definite article original blogging Life List.

So, I've had a stab.  I've only got 64 entries so far and I've only crossed one off - which is a posthumous one in a way - I saw Paul McCartney live 2 years ago at Hard Rock Calling and honestly, my life was complete so I'm putting that on there as it's something I've achieved that I wanted to in my lifetime (obviously, there's still Scarlett and marrying Andy but erm, A REAL BEATLE, PLAYING LIVE, no sorry, that is fulfillment for me!)

I've put it on it's own permanent little page so feel free to have a look - I'll give you a post when I update it in terms of achieving something or adding something new that I've thought of!

So, what do you think of my life's ambitions so far?!

Wednesday 11 July 2012

The Wonderful World of Being a Mrs

So, it's been and gone.  I do feel slightly bereft not having anything to worry and stress about in the evenings. And I haven't really but my new 'free' time to very good use lately, which is why I'm creating a Life List.  But more on that later.

So, the wedding, The Wedding, THE WEDDING!!  OF THE FECKING CENTURY!  Oh my goodness gracious.  Right, sorry, all other weddings, including those I have been to, and those I am yet to attend, but dude, we rocked the wedding thing.  Totally rocked it.  Thinking back, there is no way that I can't think, "Woooo Yeah!!" and get a little air punchy about it.

I'll post some pictures in a seperate page for anyone who hasn't seen them and really, I think I'll let them speak for themselves.  I guess because A: I might get a bit too show-offy, B: Because I get sad that it went so quickly and C: Because I don't want to bore you all.  Oh, and D: I'm in the process of submitting them to a wedding blog and I think I have to wait until after that!

Needless to say, the day went without a hitch (oh, wait, apart from my bridesmaids, Scarlett and the photographer getting stuck in horrendous traffic and me having to plead with the Registrars to wait.  Thankfully, they did, and we were married about 20 minutes later than planned!).  The food was excellent, my dress was ace, my shoes, whilst looking totes amazeballs, were bloody painful because I forgot the gel insole thingies (boooo!) and everyone had a grand time.

The evening was just the best bit I think.  First dance, went brilliantly (more on that another time), sweet buffet went down a treat, cheese tower was admired, many silly photos were taken in the photobooth and, er, the best bit - THE BEATLES!!  Well, nearly, but I tell you what, they were just so brilliant.  Everyone was up and dancing to them.  And the funniest bit - Starey George from Liverpool was there!  Cue enormous hilarity between us Liverpool Hen Do Veterans and much hiding from Lex!

There's just so much that I want to remember, and I will, and maybe every now and then I will slip in a post every now and then with a fresh wedding anecdote, because there were so many amazing little snippets of the day I want to share.

All that remains for me to say really is, thanks for following the very sporadic wedding posts and that, if you want to carry on reading my inane babblings, please do.  I have lots of writing projects in the pipeline that I want to share, including this blog going back to being just a run of the mill, normal blog.  I hope you don't mind?!  I promise to post pictures every now and then!

Yours,

Mrs Hiorns x