Book Club Mondays: The Fifty Shades of Grey Series

This week's Book Club Monday is a little special, in that I read three books instead of just one! Those three books just so happen to be three of the most popular books in recent history - the Fifty Shades of Grey series. 

I didn't really want to read these books, if I can be honest. I just wanted to see what all of the fuss was about. I went in knowing three things: they've been nicknamed 'mommy porn', they were all based off of a Twilight fan fiction story, and the writing isn't that great. These are all things I learned based on reviews I read online, so at least I wasn't surprised. 

Did I enjoy the books? Not really. Did I get some sort of weird sexual enjoyment out of reading all of the BDSM-laden sexcapades of one Anastasia Steele and one Christian Grey? No. The story has been done so many times before - disadvantaged, naive girl meets filthy rich businessman, they sleep together, and drama ensues. Of course. 

From what I learned going in, the books' events all take place in a matter of weeks. Anastasia meets Christian by going to do an interview for her college's student magazine in her friend Kate's place, and makes a great first impression by tripping and falling into his office face first. That, and she had nearly no interviewing experience, and asked the powerful businessman if he was gay. Of course. Because that would happen. Christian Grey starts all but stalking this poor girl, and then, of course, they fall in love with each other. At least E.L. James got the emotional abuse part of the Twilight storyline in there without fail. The first book, Fifty Shades of Grey, chronicles Anastasia's feelings through meeting the untouchable Grey, having her virginity taken by him, and trying to wrap her head around him wanting her to be his newest of sixteen submissives. Eventually, she realizes that this is absolutely ridiculous, and leaves him. And you're suckered into reading another book.

Fifty Shades Darker starts off with a strange Christian Grey flashback (since at this point we've learned he had a totally fucked up childhood), and gets right into the middle of Anastasia's pity party. She leaves him, but she feels badly. She got a new job as assistant to a commissioning editor at a prestigious publishing company in Seattle, and tries to fill her time working, crying, and sleeping. Such an uplifting message. Of course, at this point, Christian starts to weasel his way back into Anastasia's life, by creepily showing up at places she goes since he's tracking her movements via her phone - at the exact same time as her skeezy boss, Jack Hyde, decides that sexual harassment is the sure way to a woman's heart. Anastasia and Christian get back together. They bang each other - a lot, she changes his mind about wanting her as a submissive and wants to have a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, they bang, they fight, they bang, etc. Honestly, I could only read the gratuitous sex scenes until about halfway through this book. At that point, they were almost mundane. As mundane as Anastasia's constant musing about how beautiful and untouchable Christian is in comparison to any other guy ever born. Christian continues to be creepy - even going so far as to buy the company Anastasia works for, and shortly after, fire her creepy boss, Jack - this is, after Jack attempts to force himself on her and causes a whole heap of trouble. His creepiness must be alluring to Anastasia, since she agrees to marry him. And they bang. And they bang. and Jack Hyde seeks revenge. Aaaaand then the book ends. 

By the time I read Fifty Shades Freed, the third (and final) installment of the series, I was so utterly and completely over Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey I could puke. Her undying love for this guy was sickening. He obviously had issues, and she did what girls do every day - she tried to fix him. We all know that never works. Now, I'm not entirely positive when Freed takes place in comparison to the first book, but the fact that Christian and Anastasia get married kills any thought of this relationship - and story - being even remotely believable. Or does it? They get married, Anastasia gets used to being the wife of a rich dude, Christian's helicopter is sabotaged and everybody thinks he's dead - but of course he isn't, and of course Jack Hyde is to blame… I'm sure you can guess the rest, so I don't want to spoil it for you. As far as entertainment went, though, Fifty Shades Freed took the cake.

All in all, I didn't find anything really worth liking or taking away from the Fifty Shades series. If anything, it just makes me sad that this is what writing has to be in order to be popular, and that this is what people all over the world are turning to in an attempt to fix their broken relationships and spice up their marriages just makes me shake my head. Although, I suppose the money spent on these books is cheaper than marriage counseling. 

How To Tuesday: Nail Fail!

Tonight, I was 100% ready to try out nail water marbling. I got out my nail polish and other supplies, and was ready to write a tutorial on this pretty popular new nail style.

Hypothetically, it seems pretty simple. You need nail polish, a small bowl, room temperature water, and a stick to stir the marble effect into. Once you get the marble effect you want, you dip your nail into the polish and are supposed to have an awesome effect. 

...Unless you're me. Then, you wind up with a barely-identifiable blob of purple and teal. And you somehow scrape all of the polish off of one of your nails. I realized that I forgot the final step of the dip process, which is pulling the excess away before you pull your nail back from the water. Whoops. 

Undeterred, I decided, "Okay, let's try Scotch tape nails instead!" So I painted them a single color, and figured that I would wait for them to dry and do a simple geometric design. 

That is, until I realized that I hadn't waited long enough and pulled off almost all of the first color I painted. Since it was already screwed up, I figured that I would pile on a bunch more of a second color just to see how it would look.

...And it looked bad. So I took it all off and maybe I'll pay better attention to the directions next time, and maybe not get quite so frustrated. Oh well - every DIY can't be perfect, now can it?

How To Tuesday: Fabric Canvas Wall Art!

Since things have been changing rapidly around my house these days, I decided that the previously undecorated bedroom needed a little something (especially since it's just mine). I wanted something simple that wasn't too time consuming, and that anyone could do! I think I found a great solution (at least for one of the walls in the room).

You will need:

• 1 yard of fabric
• canvas (mine was 22x28, but you can use any size)
• glue (I used E-6000, but you could use hot glue)

Now that your supplies are collected, let's get started!

1. Take your fabric and put it over the canvas (or canvases) you plan to use. This will help to get the design straight so that it looks the way you want it to. Also, if you feel like it, iron the fabric first. 
2. Starting on the top side, glue down your fabric. First, glue down the top and the bottom, then move onto the sides. 
3. When gluing the sides, be sure to pull the fabric taut so you don't wind up with ripples and lines (especially when you haven't ironed your fabric).
4. Cut off excess fabric from sides if necessary. 
5. Fold over corners so you have a nice, finished look. 
6. Hang and enjoy!

This is an incredibly simple, cheap project. If you need to spice up a room in your home, I would definitely suggest trying this out. Canvases are always on sale at local craft shops, and a yard of fabric (especially with a coupon) is super cheap! I personally would have used hot glue for this if doing it again, but I've never used E-6000, so wanted to give it a try.

Post your opinions in the comments - and if you try it, I'd love to see a photo!

Book Club Mondays: Deadlocked

In an attempt to get back into regular blogging, I (obviously) need to get back into my regular weekly posts – so, for the first time in several weeks, here is your Book Club Monday – featuring the 12^th book in the Southern Vampire Mysteries (AKA, the Sookie Stackhouse novels), Deadlocked, by Charlaine Harris!

Now, I’ve been watching True Blood fairly religiously for as long as it’s been on television (the fifth season just started last week! Fifth! Where does the time go?), and once I found out it was a series of books, I was all about it. I picked up Dead Until Dark at the local Half Price Books, and an obsession was born – an obsession that involved lots of DVR’ed True Blood episodes and a lot of trips to two separate Half Price Books locations, but I read the first eleven books really fast – even for me, and I’m damn near a speed reader.

One thing that I’ve noticed about the books (if you haven’t noticed, here’s a cold slap of reality), is that besides the first few, the show doesn’t follow them at ALL. There is a solid storyline laid down in the book, that, much like the show, doesn’t make any damn sense half of the time, but that’s moderately awesome at the same time. There’s always going to be plot points that nobody cares about, or that only some people care about, and there’s always no less than ten separate storylines happening at one given time. That’s awesome, I get that.

The thing about Deadlocked is that for one, I had no idea it was even out until I happened to be at Barnes and Noble and saw that the 11^th book, Dead Reckoning was out in paperback, so I knew that the next installment had to be out (just as a fun bibliophile tidbit – books typically come out in paperback around a year after their original hardcover version is published). I went home, took to my Kindle, found it, read it, and digested it all in the space of about three days.

And you know…. I don’t necessarily think that anything moved forward in the book whatsoever. I felt like it was a lot of random storylines thrown into a mixing pot and Deadlocked was what emerged. From about the sixth book on, it was what I’d come to expect, but this was different – this felt like I was reading the “ohmygodIamsosickof thesecharactersandthesestorylinesandthesepeoplejustkeepmakingmewritethesebooksbutMANARETHOSEHBOCHECKSNICE” ramblings of someone who was absolutely and completely OVER what she had created. And you know, for Charlaine Harris, I suppose it would be understandable. For me, she could have quit after around the fifth or sixth book, and I would have been okay with it.

Here’s the jacket description:

It’s vampire politics as usual around the town of Bon Temps, but never before have they hit so close to Sookie’s heart…

Growing up with telepathic abilities, Sookie Stackhouse realized early on there were things she’d rather not know. And now that she’s an adult, she also realizes that some things she knows about, she’d rather not see—like Eric Northman feeding off another woman. A younger one.

There’s a thing or two she’d like to say about that, but she has to keep quiet—Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), is in town. It’s the worst possible time for a human body to show up in Eric’s front yard—especially the body of the woman whose blood he just drank.

Now, it’s up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl’s fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who’s set out to make Sookie’s world come crashing down.

One thing I learned about five or six books into the series is that the jacket description means NOTHING, since they lovingly leave out the fact that there’s so many other storylines and things happening in the background that just barely tie it all together that you get pulled away from anything you remotely thought was in the book.

All I can say is that if you’ve already read the first eleven books in the series, you might as well read this one. I can’t give it a gleaming review or an awful, disdainful rant about how bad it was, but if I could rate it, it would get a good ‘meh’.

Please, be patient with me...

As much as we like to think we know what's coming, or what's going to happen, we don't. Everything was planned out, I had a future to plan for... and it was all taken away from me.

Now, I'm back to the drawing board, back to being by myself and trying to re-create a life I can be proud of. While I don't place blame or wish ill will, it just isn't the right time for us right now. I still have a lot of love in my heart for what used to be. Whether there is a future or not, only time will tell - all I know is that it will not be an easy road.

Please be patient with me while I find my voice again. In the week since this has happened, I have been doing a lot of thinking, a lot of soul-searching.. and even a little bit of crafting. Trying to re-build a life on my own, rather than a life with another person.

Thank you so much for continuing to read, and continuing to care. I appreciate it more than you know - and this is definitely not the 50th post I was expecting to celebrate.