Since I started to work in the book shop I feel like I have to read more so I can do my job better. So I can recommend books and talk about popular books with my own words and not just what I've read or what I've heard from collages for example.
I looked at the top 10 list at work and thought about what I wanted to read. My collage Annika, also Swedish, was at the time reading The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by the Swedish author Jonas Jonasson. This book was really popular in Sweden when it came out in 2009. Everyone was reading it or at least talking about it, but because of that I never read it even though it was in the apartment. This happens to me sometimes when a book is to popular - I get totally uninterested in it and sometimes even trash talk it without reading it but reading about it. I know, it's wrong and I'm not really a literary snob like that. People can read what ever they like, as long as they read.
The Hundred-Year-Old... has become really popular in Germany too. It's on every book top list there is to find almost. Both in English and German. In Pocket Shop, where I work, it's number four at the German top list and number two at the English.
Annika had the book in Swedish so I asked her if I could borrow it after she was done. I could and I read it.
The title says what is about. It's about a Hundred-Year-Old man who climbs out of his window on his hundred year birthday and disappeared. Easy as that. You get to follow Allan, as the hundred-year-old is called, on his journey from his home until he disappears and all the turns on the way. Since Alan is hundred he has a lot of stories to tell about his long life and what he's been up to. You get to read the most funny stories about what he has done in his life. Meeting presidents, being a prisoner in Gulag and escaping, walking for years though Asia, blowing up bridges during wars and so on. It's a very different way, and funny way to read about history. Many compare it to the movie Forrest Gump (1994) which I think is a pretty good comparison. The book is of course different but it's an easy way to compare it that people that hasn't read it yet get.
I enjoyed this book, specially at the beginning when I think the stories from Allan's life are more entertaining that they are later in the book. Also the present time story I found funnier in the beginning. I laughed a lot when I was reading it. It's a funny book and Jonasson writes it in this easy and funny way so it feel like the pages are almost turning themselves. Towards the end though I felt it got a bit to long-drawn and it was kind of hard to keep my interested up for it. Circa 500 pages is, for me, a bit to long for this kind of book. Overall I liked it though.
To the next book. Yes, I know it's kind of shameful to confess but I read Fifty Shades of Gray. Everyone is reading this book(s) at the moment. EVERYONE! From teenage girls to old men. It's the most sold book in both German and English at work, and it's super popular. People talk about it all the time and so many buy it every day at work. I never wanted to read this book, yet I did. Why? I got to curious. Really curiosity killed the cat on this one. The cat being me.
This book sells so much and people are so curious. When the second book came out in German customers just turned out of nowhere super hyped about reading part two.
I get asked almost every time I work about this book. If I've read it and why people are reading it, if it's any good and so on. I've read about this book before I read it and it really has mixed reviews. Just reading the reviews on Amazon made me laugh. Some are really hating this book, writing that if you read it - you can never unread it or just writing that Fifty Shades.. is the biggest piece of shit they ever read and can't understand the hype. Others loves it and give it 5 stars and rave about it. These reviews are of course not as fun to read for my cynical self, so I didn't know why people like it.
Anyway, I was working a day when nothing was happening. I had nothing to do really. No one literary seemed to be flying that that so I picked up Fifty Shades.. and started to read. Do you know the background story to Fifty Shades of Gray?
It's a loosely based book on Twilight and was to a beginning Twilight fan fiction. It's an erotic book with sadomasochistic and BDSM sex, that got popular because it was a cheap e-book that people could read shamelessly on their e-readers without anyone knowing what they where reading. Then it spread like wild fire and got printed and now everyone is reading it. The names of the characters are changed so it's not Bella and Edward like in Twilight but Ana and Christian.
Ana, or Anastasia Steel which is her full name, is a 22 years old, smart and apparently super hot virgin. She's been kissed like twice in her life and she hasn't really been attracted to anyone in her whole life. Possible? Really? I say no, but let's go on.
She meets Christian Gray, a 27 year old multi millionaire and owner of a big company, when she does a favor for her friend and interviews him for the university newspaper.
She's attracted to him directly and he's attracted to her.
He tries to stay away but Ana's apparently breathtaking and the most interesting woman Gray has every meet, so of course that doesn't go. Gray tells her again and again that he's no good for her, but still buys her expensive things and is totally smitten with her.
They start to have meet of course and then we come to the sex. Gray has never had vanilla sex and miss Steel has never had sex at all. They still do it, a first for both his first vanilla and her first sexual experiences every. She has, of course, never even masturbated. Yes, sure, let's just pretend that we buy that too.
Gray wants to have BDSM sex in his Red Chamber of Pain as Ana calls it and Ana wants to have a real relationship. Gray doesn't what to get to close and he never sleeps with anyone and he never makes love, he fucks hard.
So Gray sends Ana a contract for her to sigh if they are going to continue what they are doing. It's all about what she should and shouldn't do. All from eating to sex. Gray want Ana so submission(sub) to her and he being the the dominant(dom). Ana's not sure that she want to do all the things that Gray want so do, but is still curious and can't keep away from Gray and they start having (light) BDSM sex.
This is in short what the book is about. Every chapter includes sex after a while in some way. Ana being confused but blown away by Gray and Gray trying to give Ana what she needs in form of more, meaning sleeping next to each other and having an emotional relationship.
Do I get the big hype now? Not really. I now know what it's all about but the book is poorly written. It's a fast read but for me very unbelievable. I know, it's fiction but let's face it - really?
The problems I have is Ana, the whole virgin but super hot, never been kissed, never been attracted to anyone and with no sexual experience at all, become so into Gray that she, for example, gets tied to the bed while Gray has his way with her and Ana gets spanked if she rolls her eyes at Gray. Ana can't even eat when she's around Gray because he's so attractive. Come on - really? This might be what I find most unlikely.
Gray is also unreal character, this rich guy who fall for this not that special girl. He stalks her like crazy, tracking her phone and flows her when she goes away for a weekend. Okay? No, creepy I say. Gray also never have had vanilla sex is explained by him having a sub/dom relationship with one of his mother friends for several years from the age of 15. Gray always clamming that he needs to have a BDSM relationship and that this woman saved his life when he was in a dark place. Gray is also so proper in everything but the bedroom (and other places) and always calls Ana, miss Steel or Anastasia excepted when during sex and when he comes.
I don't know there are many things about this book I find unlikely. I have experiences of a BDSM so I done some things that are written in the book, but I still find it unlikely.
I still read it in a day because I got sucked into it, just like I did with Twilight, and just read the whole thing, having to know how it ends.
This is not big literature, but I have to admit it's an entertaining book if you pretend to buy all characters and the story. The language is easy and repetitive.
Do I find it erotic? Sure, but it doesn't turn me on but I can understand if others get turned on by it. When I finished the book it was kind of a jaha? moment. So? This is it?
I don't think it deserves all the hype it gets and I can't believe that it's the fastest-selling paperback of all time and sold more books then -all- the Harry Potter books done. This is an impossible thought for me. Will I read book 2, Fifty Shades Darker? I'm not sure yet. Reading Fifty Shades... has made me have more to talk about at work so I still feel like I'm getting something out if it. Time spent well reading is also something I'm not yet sure of.
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