Fifty Shades of Grey

Twilight: Reimagined Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James is a book about an impossibly naïve, sexually oblivious soon-to-be college graduate, Anastasia Steele, and her toxic relationship with the unbelievably handsome and obscenely wealthy businessman, Christian Grey.  Ana's roommate, Kate, is supposed to interview Christian for the university newspaper, but is too sick to leave the apartment, so Ana fills in for her, even though she doesn't even work for the paper at all, and probably there were other students who are actually involved with the paper who were available and could have used the experience for their CVs or graduate school applications.  Anyway, so Ana meets Christian Grey and for the first time in her entire twenty-one years of life, she feels attracted to a man!  He is so incredibly good-looking that, already nervous anyway, she fumbles her way through the interview as best she can, then wants to die a little bit afterward, because she feels so foolish about some of the things she said.

On the way home, she is so flustered that she keeps talking about how pissed she is and how inconsiderate it was for Kate to have her do this interview without giving her some kind of briefing about this guy first.  ANA.  This is the age of the internet.  Even though she does not have her own computer, it would have been more than easy to look him up online.  And how she even made it through college - as a lit major, especially...you know she had papers and essays probably constantly - without her own computer is beyond me.  She must have spent a LOT of time at the library or in the school's writing lab.

It's fine, though, because she will never have to see that sinfully beautiful man again, right?  NOPE.  He shows up at her place of work, to purchase some harmless home hardware, to be used for some  mysterious and let's be honest, unimaginative purpose.  While helping Grey find these for-now-innocent items, some guy she knows shows up who asks her out every time he sees her.  As if in the good spirit of foreshadowing, Grey immediately becomes tense and suspicious.  If this were a wildlife documentary instead of whatever it is, Grey would be exhibiting some kind of visual and/or auditory behavior in an attempt to signal his claim on Ana as a potential mate.  This isn't a wildlife documentary, though, but nonetheless, he seems to be barely able to contain himself from an open display of competition for sexual resources.

Ana blows the lesser male off and is in total bliss over securing Grey's phone number and flatters herself with the notion that he came there just to see her.  Oh my, he must really like her or something, jeez!

So she calls him under the pretense of needing some photos to go with Kate's write-up of the interview, and they force their nature photographer friend, José, to broaden his occupational horizons and do his best to capture Grey's inhuman beauty on film or memory card.  The same kind of silent competitive exchange occurs between Grey and José, because José it turns out is also in love with Ana!  But heaven knows why, since she is so plain and clumsy, and it didn't matter because up until that fateful day of the interview, she was asexual anyway.  Not anymore, though!  Miracle of miracles, Grey the Grecian God has asked Ana to accompany him for a coffee.  And /SQUEE, he actually holds her hand! No one has ever done that before!  When they are leaving, clumsy little thing that she is, she almost gets run over by a cyclist in the street, but Grey, in his instinctive protective prowess, saves her!  She mentally begs him to kiss her, but as if he can read her mind, he says no.  And tells her that he is no good for her, and she would do best to stay away.

HOW CAN THIS BE? He HELD her HAND for goodness' sake!  So she pretends to have dignity and waits until rounding the corner out of sight before crumpling to the pavement to cry like an idiot.

(And it only gets more romantic from here, guys.  Get comfortable, because there is an awful lot to say about this book; I'm including a cut here, so the entire homepage doesn't get taken over with this)

Austenland

In Austenland, by Shannon Hale, we meet Jane Hayes:  30-something graphic designer living in New York.  Jane's had thirteen boyfriends in her life, and none of them ever quite match up to her idea of what a man should be.  And what's her ideal man like?  Mr. Darcy.  Yes, Jane has more than just a slight Austen obsession.  She's so obsessed with Jane Austen's novels and with Mr. Darcy in particular, that she goes so far as to hide her copy of the BBC Pride & Prejudice mini-series (ladies, you know the one...Colin Firth).  

During a visit from her mother and wealthy great-aunt Carolyn, the old woman notices the DVDs and knows immediately what is going through Jane's head.  Great-aunt Carolyn surprises Jane by booking a vacation for her at Pembrook Park, a sort of Regency reenactment resort in the English countryside, where guests and a staff of actors remain in period dress and manner for three weeks.  The clientele consists of Austen-obsessed women, who pay the exorbitant fee to be fake-courted by gentlemen like Austen's male characters.  

Jane isn't sure what to make of her great-aunt's strange gift, but the tickets and reservation are nonrefundable, and the prospect of being in the company of handsome men in breeches has piqued her interest.  Once she checks in, however, and the fantasy begins, the total immersion is a little more than she thinks she can really handle.  Will it help her kick her Darcy fixation, or will she just get even more sucked in than before?