Saturday 25 August 2012

More on the subject of books and 'that' book...

It's obvious I guess that with the success of 'that' book publishers were going to rush re-release copies of other books of a vaguely similar bent. That said, I was surprised to walk into a branch of WHSmith this morning and see a copy of a book I actually own (Haven of Obedience) sitting there at number 18 in the bestsellers chart. Of course, the cover has been redesigned to mirror the look of the '50 Shades' books, along with all the others... but unless someone has rewritten it (which I very much doubt) then it rather surprises me that it is being sold right there... I remember not too long ago if those books were available in the high street they were on a shelf on their own presumably high up away from kids.
Now I haven't read 'that' book, but I did flick though it and from what has been said about it, while it's subject may be 'racey' the language used to portray it is rather... euphemistic. As I recall, 'Haven of Obedience' while fitting the Sub Female / Male Dominant criteria the 50 Shades reader is probably looking for, doesn't quite fit into that 'porn but not really' category, it's just flat out porn.
Indeed, checking out the reviews on Amazon I'm not entirely surprised to see a couple of bad reviews criticising the lack of story and the book's focus on the sex. It is after all, a sex book...
It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out, will all the 50 Shades readers seek out harder and harder material? Will the high street respond by becoming even less bothered about the contents of the books they sell, even though they continue to put magazines like Loaded on the top shelf? It's quite amusing and interesting to see how this will go... I foresee a time in the not too distant future when someone will pick up one of these re-branded books and be appalled by it, and then the fun will really start.
As it is, Mistress R told me this morning that some book groups are planning to burn copies of 50 Shades, not because of the 'racey' nature, but simply because of the dreadful standard of writing contained therein...

*Mistress R tells me that actually the book groups are planning to burn it because it promotes violence against women, it was actually the journalist writing about it who said it should be burned because it's so badly written.

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