Fifteen Shades of Rage

This one's going to get Cinemax After Dark, so family members and sensitive friends might want to skip it.

So unless you've been living in a cave for the past few months you're all aware that the latest publishing phenomenon is the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. And anyone who knows me at all will not be surprised to learn that I have a few issues with both the book and the phenomenon. Once again I put myself in the line of fire of the millions of rabid fans, but luckily very few people read this blog – so I'm probably safe.

As most people who know me will realize it's not the down and dirty BDSM I have a problem with, it's the following myriad problems, in no particular order:

• Most of the women carting around these books are the same women who give me dirty looks and clutched their pearls for reading Marquis De Sade or Anais Nin in public. Ladies – I hate to break it to you – the S in S&M (which Fifty Shades focuses on) is named for the Marquis. So from now on I expect to be able to read 120 Days of Sodom anywhere I want, perhaps now with a post-it on the cover reading “It's like 50 Shades of Grey, but with a Better Vocabulary.”
  
  
• This whole trilogy started as online Twilight slash fiction. Essentially it's Edward and Bella getting a little kinky. The only major thing that changed from fan-fic to bestseller was the names and taking away the sparkly vampire element . And judging from the horrible, repetitive, high school girl prose, that's really all that changed. I imagine that the editor they assigned to it had to get stupid drunk to get over the pain of paying for this drivel and passed out before they could bust out their red pen. If that's the bar we're setting for published works at this point I fear for the future of the written word. And I kind of enjoy the fact that some libraries don't want to stock it because it's so poorly written, not because it's naughty.
  
  
• Most people (women) buying these books are buying it for some sort of e-reader, and most say it's because they don't want people to know what they're reading. And I call bullshit on that ladies. Especially since every other bored soccer mom is reading the exact same thing. It's not particularly naughty or salacious if every one's doing it. You can't claim to be a naughty kinkster unless you OWN it. Let your freak flag fly people.
  
  
• I have a problem with how some of the kink is handled. And it essentially breaks down into two areas:

  
  
  a) They spend a lot of time setting up Christian's (the lead male/ dominant) troubled childhood and even send him off at the end of book one for some serious therapy. Guess what people – not everyone into BDSM, or the vast majority of sexual fetishes/kinks, has had some sort of troubled childhood, or needs a psychiatrist. As Dan Savage likes to say “It's a kink, not cancer.”

  
  
  b) The lead female Anastasia, who apparently grew up in Amish country as she's 21 and doesn't have an email address, is a wide-eyed virgin who hasn't even masturbated before meeting Christian. She then jumps into a full-time BDSM relationship and goes straight for the pain. That's like going from singing along with a song in your car to auditioning for a lead in a Broadway musical with no other steps in between. Really – a virgin with no experience, no fantasies, no self-pleasuring – just randomly decides she like being a sexual submissive. We're missing a few experiences somewhere in the narrative
.
  
  
  * I find it hilarious that all of a sudden all of these women claim to be into bondage and force and pain. Really ladies? Because I've found that most kinks show up in your mind somewhere before you and your book club get together to read a book and all decide you're submissives. And if you've made it to 35-40 without getting spanked during sex, or even thought about trying it, chances are you're not ready to jump into whips and ropes and domination. It takes a little while to build up to those things. And if you don't get off on the pain, or find pleasure in it, or properly prepare, it's just going to hurt.
  
  
• I feel really, really, really bad for all the unsuspecting men out there whose wives/girlfriends are reading this and suddenly decide they're into bondage. These poor men are going to hunt down the closest sex shop and buy the special Shades of Grey branded anal beads, floggers and ropes at their wives/ girlfriends requests, take them home, attempt to use them on an unprepared or unaware woman and then get kicked in the nards when the women find out that it actually does hurt. Especially since the book does not provide all the instruction you need to safely delve into BDSM.
  
  
• I am all for reading smut, but can't we read better-written smut? Or more honest smut? Or can't we all just acknowledge that we, as a species, like reading dirty books without all having to agree on one? And how exactly are the movies versions going to work? Because if they're true to the books it's NC-17 territory. And again I'm betting that most women waiting feverishly for these movies would judge me for my internet history, and some dvd purchases I've made.
  
  
• I think the thing that's most upsetting to me is that women are proving to be a powerful consumer base for the publishing industry, but we're putting all our power behind books like Fifty Shades of Grey, and Twilight, and generic books in the Bridget Jones mode/ genre. And I know I'm losing girl points left and right on this blog, but I feel that there are better uses of our literary dollars. At least when we're getting behind The Hunger Games there's a female character who takes care of herself and everyone else around her. Or the Harry Potter phenomenon that gave us Hermione Granger, Ginny and Molly Weasly, and kick-ass Professor McGonagall, and a better love story than most in the form of Lily and Snape. Or we should have made sure that Tina Fey's Bossypants sold as many, if not more, copies as Fifty Shades.

I really feel better for getting all of that off my chest. As a final caveat – if anyone reading this book did use it as a way to finally express their kinks or as a gateway to legitimately discovering their kinks, then that's great. And if this eventually leads to a more sex-positive, everyone gets off the way they want to attitude, awesome, we need that in this country. I just feel like it's a fad that could really backfire on pre-Shades of Grey kinksters. (Most of whom are not reading the book. Mainly because we read The Story of O when we were teenagers.)

Let the angry comments commence.....

BookWench is currently reading Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore. Hilarious and informative.

I'm Back…and Still Angry!

I know, I know, I've been gone for a long time. I'm very, very sorry. I was away from the blog writing and producing my own web series. It's very literary and firmly ensconced in BookWorld, only a lot nicer than what I tend to write here. Check it out at blip.tv.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. I thought I'd dive back into my Shakespearean Pet Peeves. So here it is, the silver medal pet peeve:

Shakespeare Made Stupid 

 If you walk into any major chain bookstore at this point and head to the Shakespeare section you'll be hard-pressed to find a version of his works that has not been dumbed down in some soul-crushing, literature- destroying way. It kills something inside of me every time I see some student buying a version of a great work of literature that has been stripped of so much of what makes it beautiful.

I understand that the language can be daunting, but one of the major reasons we read is to attain knowledge - so use it as a way to learn. My parents started taking me to see Shakespeare productions when I was about four or five. I certainly did not understand every word, or even most of the words, but I could follow the story well enough by listening for the words I did know. Then when I was old enough to start reading Shakespeare on my own I could infer what the words I didn't know meant in context. Or I could use one of those magical dictionary things. Or I could ask my English teacher at school. Even while studying the Bard on a college level I ran into things I didn't understand, and I found a special dictionary just for Shakespeare's works. And now that the magical Internet exists there's really no excuse for running in terror from every thee and thou and bodkin. The one thing I never did was ask someone to dumb it down for me, because that's cheating.

Not only is it lazy, but it loses so much in the dumbing-down process. Frankly “But soft what light through yonder window breaks?” loses a lot of it's beauty and magic when it turns into “But wait, what's that light in the window over there?” And the philosophical musing of “To be or not to be, that is the question.” becomes the pedestrian “The question is: is it better to be alive or dead?” And once you stripped all the beauty and poetry away- you're not reading Shakespeare anymore. You're reading some modern editor's soulless version of one of the English languages most enduring artists. See- these things make me REALLY angry. And that's why my co-workers would gather around if someone asked me for one.  There was a pool going for what Shakespeare- related stupid question would finally push me over the edge.

Now- I'm not judging the storybook versions of the plays written for children. I think they're a great way to introduce anyone under the age of eleven to the stories of Shakespeare, so when they're old enough they can delve into the language. However, after middle school you should be able to make your way through the play in its original form.

So if you've read the Cliffs Notes, Spark Notes, Monarch Notes, Shakespeare-Made-Simple, or Barron's Side-by-Side versions of Hamlet, then I'm sorry to tell you – you have not read Hamlet. In fact, if it's one of the Notes versions, you haven't even read a book or a story. You've read what's left over when language, character, story and poetry have been removed from a cornerstone of the literary canon. And heaven help you if you ask me for an “English translation” of one of the greatest works of English literature, because I will absolutely give you a lecture about the language as I walk you to the shelf and hand you the most expensive version of the play you're looking for. I call it a stupidity tax, and my friend, you've earned it.

BookWench just finished reading Tough Sh*t by Kevin Smith.  He's my film-making inspiration, and this book was amazing.  I laughed, I cried, I used about 25 Post-it flags for the important bits.

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BookWench in the Crosshairs

So this post may lose me some major lit-nerd cred and one or more of my woman cards, because I'm going to go up against some of the pillars of lady lit nerd-dom...The Brontes. I've alluded to these issues here and here, and thought it was time to address them head on, mainly because I haven't had any really hateful comments directed my way in a while.

My first Bronte issue shouldn't raise too much ire, since it's mostly an opinion on the overall reading experience. I have never enjoyed reading a novel by a Bronte. It took me six tries to make it past the first three chapters of Jane Eyre. And the only reason I made it the last time was because it was required reading for an English class. To me they always felt dense and forced in a way I don't respond to that well. And I read books like this for fun. However, the Brontes always felt like work.

The issue I have that's going to get me hate mail is that I do not understand, at all, how the books Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are held up as romantic masterpieces. There is a major disconnect for me between those stories and any idea of romance or love.

Now, before everyone gets up in arms, I totally understand the appeal of the bad boy. A cursory glance at my dating history abundantly proves that. It's a laundry list of straight-up bad boys and, far worse in the long run, Eddie Haskell-type men. (I included the link for those under 30/ people not obsessed with Nick at Night in the late '80s.) This list, along with my Wench-y personality traits totally explain why I'm still single, but further exploration into that is material for a different blog that would reach Tolstoy-esque length.

Sorry...Back to the plot. For some reason these “bad boys” of literature really just piss me off. If it were just a moody, temperamental man with anger issues I would be on board, but Rochester and Heathcliff take it to a scary, abusive, borderline psychopathic place. And as much fun as I've had with bad boys if I had discovered one had an insane wife locked away in the attic while being engaged to me I think any sort of continued relationship would be out of the question. Even if the wife eventually died. Seriously Jane, he did it to one wife, the room's set up, who's to say he wouldn't eventually shove you up there.*

As for Heathcliff, he and Catherine together manage to ruin two families for multiple generations out of some very misguided views on love and revenge. And I understand the arguments that Catherine is a product of her time, and to some extent I respect that, but there is still a level of foolishly romantic child with little to no backbone that propels the story to it's fairly awful end.

And before the daggers appear at my throat, I do have a romantic side. I hide it under a lot of black clothing and attitude, but put in the movie Love, Actually and I'm a crying mess on the floor by the end. I just can not understand the idea of romance that involves such intense levels of lying and vengeance. And for women like the Brontes who were flouting social convention by being writers, I guess I've always been disappointed that the women in their novels seem to get the bad end of the deal.

So now between Team Edward and Team Bronte I'm popping on lit hit lists all over the place. At least with Team Bronte I expect well-written, correctly spelled death threats.

*Yes, I absolutely yell at fictional characters.  They make well fleshed-out imaginary friends.

Smell You Later

So this post really falls under the heading of General Retail/ Life Rules. I actually wrote it a few years ago, so the two of you who read it then are in for a re-run.

This post was inspired by my new retail job as I have left BookWorld and am temporarily back in Fancy Cooking retail. What really inspired this post is not so much the job as the citiizens of the town I currently work in. Glendale, California is a wholly unique retail experience that I had pretty successfully repressed from the last time I worked there. In the past few weeks it has all come rushing back to me in wave after unpleasant wave. There is a long list of things I have only experienced or experienced on an EXTREME level there. So, without further ado-

BookWench's Retail/Life Rule of the Week -

                     It's A Perfume Spray, not a Marinade

That's right folks - this week's lesson is inspired by the overwhelming number of inconsiderate people I am forced to interact with on a daily basis who feel the need to announce their presence with scent, often minutes before they themselves arrive.  Seriously people - a little dab will do you.  Now that we, as a people, have access to regular showers, deodorant and a dizzying array of bath products the need to douse ourselves in cheap perfume is no longer necessary.  In fact it's kind of aggressive and rude to the people forced to inhale your nauseating stench.  This goes double if your bottle of perfume cost less than $5 or contains the words "Designer Impostors."  Triple if I can smell your perfume from more than a foot away or can still smell it more than a minute after you leave.  Quadruple annoyance points if everything you own, including the credit card you hand me is saturated with your scent.  It's plastic people, it should not be saturated with anything.  And, finally, I should be allowed to ask you to leave my general vicinity and bestow the highest order of annoyance on you if I can TASTE your fragrance if I come within a foot of you.  (I actually had to rinse my mouth out with strong coffee the other night because I could taste a gentleman's cologne on my tongue for a solid hour after he invaded my personal space.) 

Remember - a good perfume should be used as an allure.  A subtle whiff to catch the attention of those around you and create a positive sense memory they can connect with you.  The secret to creating interest is to always leave your audience wanting more. Not to leave everyone in your wake gasping and rushing for the nearest source of fresh air. You do not want the people around you to associate you with funeral homes, Great-aunt Gertrude, or a pounding headache and the fervent hope that lunch stays down.

Please - as a fellow human being I implore everyone, especially the majority population of Glendale, CA*- go easy with the fragrances.  I promise people will still notice you even if they can't smell you coming and going.  Buy better perfume and use just a little, the world will be greatful for your restraint.  And pass this information along to any perfume abusers in your life.


*Proof that it's not just me- After posting this I watched a recent episode of Chuck - "Chuck vs the Frosted Tips" where they make a joke about a character smelling like the Glendale Galleria.  I like it when the TV proves I'm not overly judgmental.

Bard Rage Part 2

           To begin I would like to apologize for taking another break in the blog. I've been working on another writing project, one that you'll be able to watch on your magic internet devices in early 2012. It's a really exciting project, and it even ties back in to BookWorld, and I'll be updating about it here as it gets closer to realization.

         As I return to this world I thought I would end the suspense from this previous post*, and present Shakespearian Pet Peeves numbers 4 and 5. I'm so kind, the two people moderately interested in this information are going to be pleased. I decided to combine these two since they don't really warrant an entire post each, but they still fill me with a significant amount of Bard-Nerd rage.

So with out further ado-

BookWench's Shakespearian Pet Peeve # 5 – 

Twilight Re-Branding.

So this exists-

            I understand the business logic- people will pay money for ANYTHING (seriously, anything) provided it says Twilight, Edward, Bella, or Jacob, or if it has the now distinct black, red, and white cover design and font style seen above. And I wasn't that upset when the co-opted Wuthering Heights since both books involve overbearing, controlling men and the women who are slavishly devoted to them, unconcerned with whomever else they hurt along the way. (I told you I had some Bronte issues.) But when you go for my Romeo and Juliet, I'm going to have some issues.

            The only way this becomes okay with me is if you retroactively make the main characters of Twilight kill themselves in the same number of pages given to Romeo and Juliet. (Though that almost seems too nice and quick, as I would like them to die slowly, preferably at my hands.**)

           Seriously Twi-hards, you make my book retail life miserable enough, leave the things I love alone.

BookWench's Shakespearian Pet Peeve #5 - 

“Why isn't Shakespeare in non-fiction with the other history books?”

           I'm sorry foolish customer, but the PLAY about the deposed duke who becomes a wizard and lives on a magical island and controls the spirits there is not a history book. It's a make pretend story. And I know it's written in “that old-timey language,”*** but it's still not a history book.

           Even the History Plays aren't a very factual account of what happened. Shakespeare was writing revisionist history to please the monarch currently on the throne, partly because he needed aristocratic patronage, but also because he liked his head firmly attached to his body. So Richard III gets a made-up hunchback and an extra veneer of evil because his defeat allowed the Tudor (and later Stuart) dynasties to exist. So no matter how you slice it Shakespeare does not belong on a shelf with meticulously researched, very dense tomes about the actual history of England. We don't keep Sophocles over there either, and his plays are even older than Bill's.****

           So there you go – two more Shakespearian Pet Peeves (and a Bronte/Twilight peevish bonus!) shared with the world (i.e. the 10 of you who read this blog.) I'm saving the last two for days when I've had more to drink so I don't die of a rage stroke on my keyboard.  Seriously, I've hung up on people, left the room, and yelled at the TV for things related to the top two, unforgivable Shakespeare transgressions.

*Now edited to include a picture of one of the dumbest tattoos ever.

**Yes, I am aware I cannot actually murder fictional characters. But I really want to.  Having said that I am probably now on some sort of Twilight enemies list.  Someone will find me dead with Team Edward Forever written in my blood next to my dead body.

***Actual customer quote

****That's right, we have a friendly nickname-y relationship.