How do you write a book review without reading the book? You have a lengthy, spirited discussion with your women friends who are already reading, or have read it! Plus you have no shame.
Shades of Grey ... it has called to me from many a bookshelf in several airports over the past few months. I have heard... it's about sex, it's about spicy and taboo sex, it was a quick, light read. Almost everyone at work has read it or is reading it. I was starting to feel out of date and out of the loop... so was very, very tempted. Temptation... I'm pretty sure you can read about this in the book as well.
Spoiler alert... I had ASSUMED it was about older individuals... you, know, my age group. Much to my horror, I learnt yesterday it was about young adults, perhaps not even in their 20's. What are we to make of this? Is this just fluff or a real assault on humankind's hard fought battle for equality of the sexes? (maybe I'll actually have to read it for myself.)
And so what if it is someones fantasy that just happens to take us back decades as far as womens' rights are concerned? Do we older women need to protest, demonstrate and boycott (again) so that younger women get the message that we don't have to be objects to have satisfying, committed relationship? Or, maybe, they know this already, and that's why a book like this can outsell Harry Potter. Because it's nothing new, nothing to get upset about. Maybe we (I) need to trust that enough change has happened in relationships between people (men and women, women and women, men and men) that the readers don't think of this as something to be emulated, just as the fluff it is. Hope. Fingers crossed.
