OOOOHHH the movie opens TODAY!! now, i'm not likely to ever see the movie, but i will say it's pretty ballsy to cast the romantic lead - a character wOOOOHHH the movie opens TODAY!! now, i'm not likely to ever see the movie, but i will say it's pretty ballsy to cast the romantic lead - a character who ties up ladies for erotic enjoyment - with the actor that many people only know as the character who ties up ladies for erotic enjoyment ... and then kills them.
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now hear me out, people. i liked it, but i didn't like it-like it. the writing is shitty, it is, but i am a sucker for enthusiasm. and you can tell she has it. at the reading of hers i worked, she didn't come across as some fame-hungry monster -she seems as baffled by her success as i am. it's like people with ugly kids. they know what they have brought into the world, but they love it regardless, and they're just happy when the other kids play with it on the playground. and it's not that i think she's ashamed of it, she probably thinks it is quite good, but she knows it isn't high lit or anything.
and yeah, it started out as fanfiction, but i was informed rather tartly last night that she always intended to publish it and was just using the fanfic community for feedback, so any grace i was going to give to her on the grounds that "this was intended as a tribute not initially intended for publication and so we can't judge it on the same grounds" has been undermined. but i will keep it at three stars, because it was okay, for what it was. i rolled my eyes a lot while reading this (and in terms of this book's rules, my ass would have been so sore) but there was something about the author's dopey-puppy earnestness that i found endearing. so, final verdict: not terrible,(okay, a little terrible) but not worthy of a ny times bestseller when there are so many genuinely good books out there. onto...
the sex
and those of you with a knee-jerk reaction to bdsm - because i have seen comments on threads for this review that this book is about rape and beatings etc. etc. - just know that this is very hot topic bdsm - by which i mean the subculture fashion store at suburban malls, not that it is very topical and jodi picoult will write a book about it. although she probably will, now, now that all the ladies are reading this and wanting to spice up their bedroom lives with their schlubby husbands.i myself am not into the lifestyle, but as far as people i know who are, i know wayyy more female doms than male doms. let's face it, female doms have hotter clothing than female subs. and bdsm isn't about rape. it isn't about abuse. it is about trust, as dana so aptly put it last night (she is also not part of that scene. to my knowledge) but it is an arrangement. it is an understanding. there are safewords and precautions and for some people, that's just the way they are wired: top, bottom, straight, gay, dom, sub... and i hate it when people get all high-handed on the internets about kinks they don't understand.
"i got an open mind so why don't you all get inside"
but as far as this book goes, this is the most vanilla bdsm i have ever read. she's a virgin when they meet, and he is respectful of that, which was one of the better scenes in the book. but like any relationship in this fetish, they work out the details beforehand and determine their boundaries. and honestly, she is a shitty, shitty sub; she says "no" to a bunch of things that even i have done and i am not even kinky. and he isn't interested in things that many typical bdsm relationships would include, which ditto for that. (by which i mean i have looked a man in the eye - you don't need to know my life.) so it's very tame. if disney were going to make a bdsm movie, they would use the same contract.
what they do is what teenagers do when they are still in their experimentation stage. okay - so that's out of the way - this is bondage-lite.
moving on to the rest of it, because this had a lot fewer scenes of erotic journeying than i had feared. there are still plenty, but the first scene isn't until after page 100, and after that, it isn't taking over the whole book. but there's still enough for you people who aren't reading this for the articles.
twilight
there is a lot of debate about whether this reads like twilight, because it started out as twilight fanfic. some people say "yes" some people say "nooo." i am here to break that tie.
OF COURSE IT READS LIKE TWILIGHT!!!
are you mad?? ALL the twilightisms are there: the "i'm bad for you" speeches, the emphasis on smells, the ineffable attraction of a perfect and wealthy man to an underdescribed, clumsy and tongue-tied female who is all "who, me??" with all of the self-doubt and self-esteem issues, all the "how can such a perfect specimen fall for li'l ole me??", the seeecrets and the endless endless repetitions.and those repetitions make the book so frequently annoying.but that's not her fault, not if that is what she is going for. it's actually quite remarkable that she was able to mimic meyer's style to that extent. sure, it's irritating as hell, but as an homage, it's quite accomplished.i have decided to interpret her linguistic quirks as homage, not as weak writing. feel free to disagree - it's just my take on it. (although the writing is frequently weak in other areas as well. i am just feeling generous.)
language
first of all, e.l. james is british. and yet - because this is twilight fanfic, she had to set it in washington state. but no one told her how we talk. pssst - we use our present perfect tense differently than you do. yes, even those of us who are/were lit majors. when americans say things like "i've not been there" etc, it sounds pompous. sorry to you americans who do talk like that, but it does. it sounds affected. especially in erotic fiction set in washington state.
miscellaneous
there are so many gasps in here, it may as well have been titled the great gaspy. i personally have never heard a man gasp with lust in response to something i have said. how do i do this? does he have a breathing disorder? why are his eyes always darkening? i have never noticed this phenomenon, but it is a staple of romance novels. i was not aware this could actually happen. biting of the lips, linen, inner goddess, subconscious, medulla oblongata, blushing, control freak... get used to these words. there are at least 50 occurrences of these words on every page.
characters
i do not understand his attraction to our heroine. she never says anything interesting, except in her emails. those emails are the best part of this book. she shows more personality there than in any conversation, and that's just odd, to me. i'm not sure why i was expecting much more from a character whose favorite book is tess, because you know how i feel about that book, but i was glad to see thomas hardy pop up frequently, even if it is my least favorite of his books.
and christian is also unstable and mercurial and full of anger towards peccadilloes. and - god - his food issues. even without his sexual needs, this guy is a piece of work. i'm not sure i could put up with someone so changeable, even if he was an uncommonly gorgeous billionaire who wanted to buy me old and expensive books... gotta draw the line somewhere.
plus, once i saw the leather bed, i'd be outta there. that's just gross, all sticky and germ-encouraging.
i don't know - i wanted to write a much better review for this book - there was so much i wanted to say, but i am feeling lazy right now. i feel weird giving it three stars, because there was so much about this book i didn't like, but the three-stars here is more of a "i thought it was going to be so much worse than it is" and my deeply charitable heart which overlooks weaknesses in favor of an author's zeal.
but here, enjoy this link of gilbert gottfried reading this book aloud:
i am not going to write a serious review of this book. if you want to talk about why bondage erotica is bad for women or how negation porn makes its ri am not going to write a serious review of this book. if you want to talk about why bondage erotica is bad for women or how negation porn makes its readers complicit in the victimization of women halfway across the globe or to sip tea and talk about depersonalization or dehumanization or anything even remotely intelligent - more power to you, but this book bored me so much i don't even care to elevate it or grant it any sort of intellectual discussion. i am really only interested in talking about why this book is boring.
i have said it before on here, but it bears repeating: despite my recent fascination with monster erotica, i personally find reading about sex boring. but even more boring than reading about sex? reading about non-sex. which is basically what this book is.
despite the lingering on the violence and the restraining, piercing, branding, whipping, the sex act itself is glossed over to the extent that at one point o has taken on several lovers, to completion, in the span of three sentences.
for example, the last line in the book:
it was only after daybreak, after all the dancers had left, that sir stephen and the commander, awakening natalie who was asleep at o's feet, helped o to her feet, led her to the middle of the courtyard, unfastened her chain and removed her mask and, laying her back upon a table, possessed her one after the other.
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penthouse letters, that is not.
and it's all like that.
but sir stephen's hands pried open her loins, forced the buttocks' portal, retreated, took her again, caressed her until she moaned.
obviously, this is intended to be a sadean experiment in impersonal and objectified sex, but more detail is given in this book to the construction of dresses than to the sex act. and that's fine, like i said, i have no regrets at not reading about "glistening honey-pots" or "man-roots."but at least that would have gotten a giggle out of me.
and why am i the only one reading lactation porn and wondering who is supposed to clean up after it? and reading this and completely focusing on the hygiene?? the fact that her lover will not permit her to wear underwear. fine. but then he will also not let her sit upon her dress, so no matter where she is: on a bar stool, at a restaurant, in the backseat of a public conveyance, she is always bare-assed, and bare-"bellied" directly on the seats.and that grossed me out more than any of the more violent tearing and whipping and piercing she undergoes.do you know where that barstool has been? then don't go rubbing your open bits about on it!seriously. why would your lover/master want you to get scabies? it is contagious!
and don't go bloodying up the good towels after a rough session of buttsecks.it's so nasty.
this is what i took from story of o and i apologize, but i have my hang-ups same as anyone, and i just feel like a place like roissy, with all those bodily fluids squirting everywhere and all the blood all over the floor and how often do they clean those riding crops??? is all i could think about.
it is interesting that the bodice rippers chose this book to read during the height of fifty shades of gray mania. here are some pictures from the fifty shades event at my store:
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seriously, do you see how many people are there?
insanity. i wasn't able to get a good photo of the author, just the woman interviewing her, but she was there, i swear.
as you can see, female-penned BDSM erotica is insanely popular.(is that redundant??is there BDSM that is just casual and unerotic? yes! and it is this book!) and i get why this book (story of o, i do not yet understand the shades phenomenon)is a BIG DEAL because at the time, it was unprecedented that a woman would have written such a violent and debasing novel. but i read it now and i can't help but think, "is that all??"
incidentally,this fifty shades phenomenon is out of hand. little old ladies reading bondage porn has got to be one of the signs of the end times.
and of course i am totally anti-censorship, but if that book is as dull as this one, who's to say that they aren't dodging a bullet here by not being allowed to read it.
full disclosure: i read a shitty translation. i am sure manny will come out and say it is better in its original language, and of that i have no doubt. but i honestly don't feel that i would have enjoyed it any better in french, even if my fluency in that language had not been severely compromised by years of disuse.
i read this first when i was in high school, when i thought that subversive literature would be cool. i read some de sade and i read story of the eye, and i read this, and honestly, it just bored the crap out of me. but i thought i still had my copy lying around. turns out, i did not. and i wasn't going to buy a new copy when the bodicers chose this book because i figured, quite rightly, that i wouldn't enjoy it any more the second time around than i had on the first. i read the introduction of the hard copy on my break at work, and i ended up borrowing a nook so's i could read it without having to shell out the whopping 8 bucks for it. and the introduction is worth reading, if you are interested in the history of its translation:
there exists an earlier translation of o, made in paris several years ago. i trust i shall not be accused of a corresponding lack of generosity if i say (and i am not the first, and far from the only one, to say it) that this earlier version is less a translation than an adaptation. it reads somehow as though the adapter-translator were in fact embarrassed by the work: certain parts are glossed over; whole descriptions, nonexistent in the original, are written in; and, indeed, much of the book is paraphrased rather than translated directly. as one who had read the work in french when it first appeared, and admired not only its contents but the extreme felicity of the style, what troubled me mostly about the earlier english version was its seeming disdain for this obvious style. subsequently, i learned this translator was a man, and it seemed to me that this fact alone sufficed to explain both the embarrassment - male embarrassment manifest in his version, and also why pauline reage had gone out of her way to comment favorably on mine: story of o, written by a woman, demands a woman translator, one who will humble herself before the work and be satisfied simply to render it, as faithfully as possible, without interpretation or unwanted elaboration. faced with a work such as o, male pride, male superiority - however liberal the male, however much he may try to suppress them - will, i am certain, somehow intrude.
now, i don't know about all that, but i do know that the translation i read was atrocious. it was boring. and at one point, it cuts off abruptly, and i was like "weird," so i went to the hard copy only to find that eleven "pages" were missing in the electronic version! what the hell?
as grateful as i am that lulu press exists, because they gave semen recipes to the world, i do not think they have the best copyeditors.not only were the ELEVEN pages missing, but there were roughly a million typos, which are terribly distracting when you are trying to focus on the buttsecks. and those pages were the whole part about her and jacqueline and the command sir stephen gives o regarding jacqueline, and is kind of a big deal, plot-wise, and is followed by one of the only interesting sections in the book, where she contemplates her role in sir stephen's orbit, and speculates upon his intent and his feelings blah blah. but stephen is such a douche ,who cares, right?
but so why am i not going to go back and read the "better" translation? because that sums it up: i really don't care. i just wanted to let everyone know that if you are interested in reading this book, DO NOT read the version on the nook or kindle or the POD lulu press one. because from what i can tell, it definitely is just an adaptation, and since you probably aren't going to go learning french just to read this book, if you are going to read it, READ IT.
AND OH MY GOD!!!
i wrote all that part yesterday, but i didn't post it because i wanted to do a side-by-side comparison of the text on the nook and the text in the hard copy, so i had to wait until i was at work to take notes and everything and I WAS WRONG! they are exactly the same. so this is not just an adaptation-mistranslation. this is the one that is supposed to be "good". that reage praised.
holy hell.
this ruins my whole review, but i do not care enough to rewrite it and this may well be my worst review ever, but i don't even care because this book bored the shit out of me TWICE and that should not be rewarded.
in more personal news, (because the rest of this review has been such intensive impersonal lit-crit, i know...)i read this on the new glow-y nook.
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which is pretty cool. were i ever to buy a device for myself, i would probably buy the glow-y one because i like to read while i am walking and it is much easier to read on a nook while walking than a book because you can do it all one-handed (LGM) but the problem i was having was with night-walking, and the light-em-up feature solves all of that. i can also late-night read without the lights on. i want to read something scarrrry on it, all alone in the dark, and see what happens.
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SPOOKY!!
even maggie approves:
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and, no - barnes and noble is not making me say this. i actually like this thing. and if i could get one for free and get all my books on it for free like i do when i borrow one, my life would be awesome. as is, it is just mediocre. like this review. no - this review sucks. like the book.
i'm not here to make fun of people who have this particular kink. at first, i was amazed that there were so manyMORE WAYS TO CELEBRATE FATHER'S DAY!!!
i'm not here to make fun of people who have this particular kink. at first, i was amazed that there were so many erotic tales devoted to lactation fetishes, and it was good for a laff, but i am going to try to be respectful here, because no one is getting hurt or exploited and it is all consensual, so i am going to try to do a straight lit-review here. but i might giggle a little. forgive me.
so i have read two of these stories now. lactate for teacher by burt maverick is unfortunately not here on goodreads.com, and i lack the motivation right now to add it myself, but i am going to briefly discuss it as a foil to drink me, daddy.
in lactate for teacher, a young girl approaches her gym teacher in his office at the end of class:
i'm sure you've heard the rumors, about me being pregnant."
"yeah, i heard a little something about that." he's looking again. i can see how badly he wants to touch my nipple-protruding tits as they stretch the thin fabric of my gym shirt.
"it's true...well, it was, anyway. i mean, i'm not anymore, but i still have these." i wiggled my tits, making them sway heavily.
"oh, oh my word." he sits down trying to hide his fully erect cock. "yes, i see. i mean- i don't see, but, um. i mean, um...what was the question again?
oh, my word is right... so the implication is that she had herself an abortion, right? there is no mention of a delivery, or a baby anywhere, and if she did in fact carry the baby full-term, her gym teacher would probably have gotten a note or something to excuse her from class, and would have heard more than "a little something," yeah? so how is she lactating? because if she did indeed have an abortion, and even if her body got ahead of itself a little, somehow, there is no way she had one within the accepted, what is it - first trimester? what is happening here? i do not understand the medical facts this story is presenting.
and then it just gets gross.
i'm sorry, i'm not trying to judge here, but this was just the messiest act of sexual intercourse i have ever heard. you would think her boobs were water hoses for the force and abundance of liquid she is able to shoot out of them. him, too. they are both very...productive. it becomes this soup of fluids going everywhere like a sexual laser show, and ruining all his paperwork. single-celled organisms everywhere are reading this book and thinking - "nope, i'm going to stay away from that, thanks..."
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"i'm asexually reproducing right now, how you like that??"
so - yeah - that book - not recommended unless you are unlike me, and can get over the thoughts of "who the hell is going to clean up after that??" this is why porn doesn't work on me - i am too damn sensible and practical.
drink me, daddy is much more tasteful. within the lactation-porn realm - this isn't edith wharton. so, it involves a 22-year old new mother and her widowed stepfather. okay - phew, no incest here, and she has been dead for five years, so no intercourse on the coffin. and she is of age. so it shouldn't be icky, right? well... it is still icky, even if you are unrelated, to keep calling him daddy throughout. that's just a no in my book. that was inside your mother! it's not like borrowing a sweater. and come on - that is supposed to be food for your baby. won't that complicate your future breastfeeding, psychologically?
i wanted to look sexy for you, daddy. did i do okay?"
yes, sweetheart. you look so sexy. my baby girl is a woman now..
you smell so gorgeous, claire. like a real woman.
i'm every inch a real woman, daddy. but i've never been fucked by a real man..
blarg. blarg. blarg.
i mean, whatever. this book has way more intimacy in it than the other, and more of an attempt at characterization. there seem to be actual humans having relations here, not manga characters. and there is a sort of sweetness here - the characters might actually have feelings for each other. but seriously, you need to drop the "daddy" routine. and go feed your son. also: telling your stepdad, "jake loves you. i..i love you..." is a cheap ploy. jake is three months old. he doesn't love anything except your boobs, which you have been treating like a soup kitchen.seriously - he's starving. make your dad a sandwich or something.
i still don't get it, myself, as a sexy fun time, but at least i am now aware of some of the range of styles and emotional appeals within this subgenre. for science.
twins are the devil's joke on Man, and by now, you all should know my feelings on them, so i am just briefly reminding you, so you know what a SACRIFICE i made in reading this book.
and also, erotica is boring, to me. it's just people fucking. books about everest are awesome because i have never climbed everest. sex, i am familiar with that. m/m sex - this is something i have never done, obviously, so it makes it a scootch more interesting, but at the end of the day, it is still body parts entering other body parts. and if i walked into that room, they wouldn't be like, "come, join in!!", so that part of the mystique of self-insertion (careful with the word-choices, karen) into the scene is removed altogether.*
i think sage whistler (certainly her real name) recognized this, and decided to take it one step further. and so: TWINCEST!!! oh, the sultry taboo!! imagine having four hands to masturbate with!! imagine the early formative 69-in-the-womb backstories!! don't ask, don't tell, indeed...(she also has a book entitled pets, of which i am terrified, but must at least take a look at...)
this is hard to rate, so i am not going to star-rate it. on the one hand, it is fuck-larious. on the other hand, there are some problems. for example, "six foot four inches of Emilio Trinovantes stood in the doorway with his big arms crossed over an equally big chest...his height, which was slightly shorter than the twins...the only concession to their father's genes in their build was their height, six-one, and wide shoulders."
okay, so i am no mathematician, but i am positive six-four is taller than six-one. and arms that are equally as big as a chest would be cause for concern.
i also felt icky when one twin repeatedly called the other twin "babe". this is just a personal thing - that word is way skeevy, so the twinniness of it is irrelevant.
and i know it is difficult to find synonyms for "come", but this is not a sexy alternative: "joshua almost came himself. the only thing that saved him from spending was thinking how much better it would be when he came inside of jaime."
SPENDING?? uck.
but this book is a must-read, because i am pretty sure laughter helps you lose weight, makes you smarter, and cures the blues all at once.
it's not much for character development, it is 83 pages and they have sex like ten times, so that doesn't leave much room for psychological insight, but there is some external conflict in in the form of a bully and the to-tell-or-not-to-tell the taller/shorter older brother. plus a lot of male-chickens.
so, despite twins (shudder), despite miles of boning, twincest as a literary concept has to get five stars, right?? we have come a long way, baby...moll flanders just isn't shocking enough for us, anymore...twincest 2011 woot! RBRS 4-eva!!!
* and of course, this is negated by the fact that i have read not ONE but TWO books in the M/M series the administration, which i maintain are excellent books, and more like a cool dystopian series with erotic scenes than erotic literature.
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