50 Pages of Meh (pgs. 1-50)

Holy cow!

I just read the first 50 pages of 50 Shades of Grey and I’m blushing furiously. Crap! Get it together Speaker7 my subconscious sneers at me like a frothing jackal hopped up on bath salts. I slap it brutally and continue with this sentence.

There. I feel better getting that out.

Now I know a lot of people have read this book–more than 25 I think–and have spanked themselves with a lint brush while doing so (my friend, not me), but maybe you, dear reader, have not had the nonpleasure of immersing yourself in the lives of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey.

This is why I’m here so you don’t have to suffer. It’s really, really poorly written, almost as if it was translated from Chinese into English by a 13-year-old girl who does not understand Chinese or English. There is an 85% chance I will not pick up the book again unless I’m ordered to by the sock puppet I’ve labeled “Sock Monkey Christian-Edward-Jacob”.

So hold onto your riding crop and clench down on your ball gag because now: Speaker7 Wearily Proudly Presents a Cliff Notes Version of 50 Shades of Grey with Pivotal Scenes Reenacted by Hugo, the man of 1,000 faces, and Goofy, the recently named blue bunny. 

Crap, thinks Bella Ana Steele with her brain-like brain, as she navigates a grill brush through the mop of hair she calls a hair mop. I need to study for finals and write essays and curl up on a couch and read British literature, but crap-on-a-stick! I have to go interview a non-interviewed-lots tycoon because my strawberry-blonded tenacious, gamine, demanding, intense, confident, beautiful, assured, runny-eyed, flu-ridden roommate is besieged by flu-ridden germs which have given her the flu. Ana knows dick about this dude and is incapable of typing his name into a Google search engine so she’s, like, crap prepared.

Ana stumbles into her car. She’s very uncoordinated due to her exposure to fetal alcohol syndrome. Driving ensues. She arrives at a glass building that is all white, all steel, all cold, all clinical and all blonde-haired-staff like. Elevator’s fast. Some waiting and inner monologue, e.g. Crap! Holy Cow! Fart Blossom, and our two protagonists meet. . . well Ana takes a face plant into Christian Grey’s office:

Although Christian’s 10 feet away, he is able to pick her up with his freakishly long fingers and shocks her with the electromagnetic field surrounding his body.

Sparks fly literally:

Christian appears to suffer from Tourette’s. He cannot stop his mouth from quirking up and curling down. He tilts his head and arches his eyebrows incessantly. He rubs his kebab-skewer-like fingers across his lips in the style of cartoon characters who are demonstrating another cartoon character’s craziness.

Ana questioningly questions him:

At times, Ana cannot keep her schizophrenia at bay. The voice in her head makes her think certain things then reprimands her for thinking them. She slaps herself in the face while Christian looks on impassively, curling a lip, arching an eyebrow, then extending a finger to press an elevator button 60-feet away. He wants her to stay, but she’s like, crap. So she leaves. Double crap.

Ana works at the hardware store. Then goes home. Then works at the hardware store again where she is besiegedly besieged by do-it-yourselfers. During a lull, Ana feels a steel-grey gaze and looks up and locks her eyeballs into a steel-grey gaze that is coming from the steel-grey eyeballs of steely eyed Christian Grey.

He smirkily buys stuff. They talk huskily, breathily and mutterly about cable ties, masking tape and rope.

Ana’s face is as red as a stop sign recently repainted even more red, like, think really, really red, like, so bright you would think “Wow, that’s definitely not green!” She gets Christian to agree to a photoshoot for her roommate’s article. Craptastic! her subconscious sings.

Glamour shots.

Christian invites Ana out for coffee. It his opportunity to turn the tables on Ana and ask her questions. “What would you like to drink?” he murmurs, eyebrows arched in a mysterious manner. He then admits to finding her mysterious. On the walk back, Ana almost gets run over by cyclist.

Christian saves her at the last possible second. How did he move so fast? she thinks, could he be a vampire?!? “Holy cow crap,” she breathes into his marbled long-fingered arms. I want to chew on his mushy mouth, she breathily thinks. Kiss me, crapdammit!

And that’s as far as I’ve got. I don’t know, maybe they might meet up again?

I need to go lie down now.