More Books

More Books

Read Grey by E. L. James, a rewrite of Fifty Shades of Grey from the main male character’s point of view. All the controversy about the books and the movie amused me. At its heart, the story is typical of the romance genre—boy meets girl, some conflict threatens their relationship, and they overcome it to live happily ever after. Wildly popular, the story has many similarities to the also popular Pretty Woman.

A rich, jaded man seems in a position to dominate a young, naïve woman (yes, they managed to make Julia Roberts’s character, a hooker, in Pretty Woman naïve) learns love and goodness through her eyes and reforms—both stories in a nutshell. The woman prevails in each and changes the man, another typical female fantasy. Neither movie pretends to be anything but a fantasy.

I found Grey disappointing. All the hoopla about the Grey trilogy centered on the male character Christian’s penchant for sadomasochistic sex but it stemmed from a tortured (literally) childhood and never escalated to actual damage to his partners. I suspect it was a mild and not particularly realistic rendering of someone drawn to that life style. The rewrite should have been the opportunity to expand on Christian’s inner conflicts and his family and previous relationship dynamics. Grey mostly rehashed the first book with very little new information introduced. He came across as less commanding from his own viewpoint as well. Save your money.

Tess Gerritsen writes the books that the TV show Rizzoli and Isles is based on. I read a book from 2002, The Apprentice, that showed Isles as a minor character. I’d like to read a more current book and see if the writing improved. This one wasn’t bad but not top notch, too much set up for the ending, which was then obvious. Rizzoli, I thought, also came across as whiny and not nearly as smart as she appears on TV.

I loved The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. He has a way with words that draws you forward and paints vivid pictures. The section that described the atemporal’s world (the main protagonists born immortal and the villains who stole the ability) and the story climax between them bogged down in description, and the switches in time and place sometimes threw me off. The last chapter zinged along.