I was sitting at the lunch table enjoying a delicious ham, cheese, and potato-chip sandwich and reading my book when one of my coirkers spoke to me.
“Ghostie. You like to read, don’t you?”
As I clearly was reading a book at the time, I felt comfortable in confirming this. Yes, Ghostie like to read. Books good.
“Have you read the Shades of Gray books yet?”
As I have not, and don’t really plan on doing so, I replied in the negative. She proceeded to tell me that they were so good – someone had given her a gift card for Christmas and she had used it to buy the whole series, I think the total was over fifty bucks* – and how she just loved them.
“They’re very dirty, though.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“I wish there were other books like them without all … those parts. It was almost like :voice drops to whisper: pornography!”
Well, yes; I’ve never read them and I know that they are pretty racy. She receives a text and starts playing with her phone.
“I just thought I’d tell you about them, you might like them if you don’t mind the dirty parts.” She paused. “But don’t read them if you can’t handle that kind of thing.”
Oh, little girl – if you had read half of what I have read. The Greek myths alone would probably curl her hair – tons of incest, cannibalism, and bestiality.
The kicker is that this is the same coirker who made her fiance buy her two purses after she found the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit app on his cell phone. He can’t look at partially clad women, but she can read books featuring explicit sex and bondage? And why would she even bring them up if she thought I was too much of a prude to enjoy them? I’ve been reading bodice-rippers since I was in my teens so I doubt there’s anything in SoG that would shock me. (The lack of dukes and earls wearing Regency-era costume might throw me for a minute.) The bodice-rippers were probably better-written than the former bit of fanfic that she was gushing over. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t read SoG; there’s so many good “dirty” books out there, many exhaustively researched and historically accurate, that I see it as a waste of time to read them.
*My first thought was “She spent fifty dollars and only bought three books? That is such a waste.”
Amen! Amen! Amen!
If I remember correctly, this is the same coworker who had to call her mother because she didn’t know how to cut a peach, yes? I feel for you. I think, if it had been me, I wouldn’t have been able to resist saying, “Yes I read. No, I haven’t read those. I only read books that are actually well-written and not reworked fanfiction of other, horribly written tripe. Would you care for a peach?”
Yep, this is the peach girl. I usually don’t give opinions regarding reading material since it can be subjective, but I was very tempted to tell her that there are literally thousands of books that she could be reading that are better than the SoG series.
Yeah when suggesting books better than 50 shades you could suggest… like… most of them.
If you’re going to spend that much, at least buy something worth the money. One of my coirkers is fairly open about the fact that she “never” reads anything, though she did start reading some chick lit type stuff a while back. She was amazed by how much she actually enjoyed it, but then she got a new boyfriend so I think she stopped reading again.
50 bucks and only 3 books? Holy hell. With 50 bucks I’d have brought enough home to require two trips to the car.
Exactly what I was thinking. Especially if I could take it to the used bookstore – I’d be walking out of there with full boxes.
I cannot dumb down enough to read any of the “Gray” books…maybe, after the zombieacolypse.