Fifty Shades of Grey
by E. L. James · first published 2000
1% recommend80% neutral19% critical
When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms. Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving famil
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Fifty Shades of Grey is one of the best selling books of all time. Almost all the women your age have read it or seen the film. You should too.
on “'Sexual favours were the norm in music industry'” ↗Infamous Authors' Outlines for Great Works of Bad Literature * Martin Amis' UML diagram for London Fields * EL James' Balsamiq mockups for Fifty Shades Of Grey * Dan Brown's PowerPoint decks for The Da Vinci Code Couldn't resist ;) Though clearly Balsamiq mockups are the odd one out since they are useful.
on “How J.K. Rowling Plotted Harry Potter with a Hand-Drawn Spreadsheet” ↗…which won't sell to find the ones that will. It's anecdotally reported in the publishing industry---and I think it's evident in the financials as well---that breakout, millions-of-copies-sold success 50 Shades of Gray subsidized essentially all of Random House's other books for a year or two. It depends on your hits business how bad the ratio is, but in genre publishing figure that less than half of books earn out…
on “The collective insanity of the publishing industry” ↗…book writing is booming business these days as long as books are meant for general audience. Tim Ferriss, for example, has made more than $3M from his books. E L James reportedly made $100 million from Fifty Shades of Grey. There are many other authors in the millionair list purely from writing books. The reason this is happening now more than before is because of cheap electronic version of book that can be downloaded…
on “The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”” ↗…of vanity titles and success without quality. ...just makes me laugh, because we're talking about an industry that most recently is probably the most guilty of "success without quality" by way of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise and all the buckets and buckets of money it made. Self-help being a juggernaut of sales year after year. Obvious derivative slop like Pride and Prejudice & Zombies and the wish-fulfillment nostalgia…
on “What Does It Take to Be a ‘Best-Selling Author’? $3 and 5 Minutes” ↗…without really understanding context. Things like "does it have a rhyming scheme and meter". And that's not that useful because some poetry doesn't rhyme, and some doesn't adhere to a meter. Like, is 50 Shades of Grey bad writing? some might say so... but can you deny the popularity of it? Are the people that enjoyed reading that book wrong for enjoying it? Trying to apply an objective measure to quality of writing…
on “Music Theory for Musicians and Normal People” ↗…bestsellers list). At about the same time, Philip Dick was very productive and being ignored (as he was until after his death, when he was suddenly 'recognized'). Since then, 'millions of people read' 50 Shades of Grey. Topped international lists, translated into 52 languages. Not 'literary'? Neither was Moby Dick, while its author was alive. Looks like the critics were wrong. (Am I suggesting them to be comparable?…
on “The Death of Literary Culture” ↗…knowledge of the following copyrighted books (The first half of the list) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone J.K. Rowling 76% 1984 George Orwell 57% The Fellowship of the Ring J.R.R. Tolkien 51% Fifty Shades of Grey E.L. James 49% The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins 48% Lord of the Flies William Golding 43% The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams 43% Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 30% The Silmarillion…
on “ChatGPT Secret Training Data: The Top Books AI Bots Are Reading” ↗…than ASOIAF. What next? You'll tell me that Dante Alighieri's 'Divine Comedy' isn't objectively better than Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code'? Or that 'The Grapes of Wrath' isn't objectively better than 'Fifty Shades of Grey'? I don't buy your bullshit relativism.
on “Harper Lee has died” ↗I object to the word 'weird' here but I get your point. A time that comes to mind is Fifty Shades of Grey bringing sadomasochism into popular culture and discussion.
on “Show HN: Tree of Reddit Sex Life” ↗…healthy and powerful. It’s no easy task to switch his attention from fighting to mating. (If properly charmed, however, he will change his behaviour towards the female. This is the lobster equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, the fastest-selling paperback of all time, and the eternal Beauty-and-the-Beast plot of archetypal romance. This is the pattern of behaviour continually represented in the sexually explicit literary…
on “Ask HN: What are good resources for life advice?” ↗I didn't know 50 Shades of Grey was erotica until the movie trailers started hitting TV. Most guys had no clue about the book other than thinking it was a straight forward romance book. I could make the same claims against other people…
on “The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced” ↗…tradeoff because of the finite time for reading. One can reread Shakespeare's 4 tragedies (Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth) again for the 10th time (about 8 hours of reading) -- or -- read E.L. James "50 Shades of Grey" for the 1st time (also about ~8 hours of reading). Some writers may suggest that you read E.L. James because that way, you can mark the checkbox of "read some BDSM material" and hence satisfy the "read…
on “The Case Against Reading Everything” ↗…say that they are, but not for video games, but for all things in general. Sturgeon's law [0] states that "ninety percent of everything is crap." And it was supposedly originally about sci-fi novels! “Fifty Shades of Grey” was completely criticized on all fronts by reviewers, but still became one of the top bestsellers. If you look at ancient myths, we have things like a series of myths with a central plot resolving around…
on “Truths about video game stories” ↗Is "The Life of Rosa Parks" inappropriate for children? Should it not be available in school libraries? Clearly I would agree that Fifty Shades of Grey should probably not be available in a school library. I would debate, given its historical significance, whether Mein Kampf should be included. But a book about the life of Rosa Parks should be mandatory…
on “We Analyzed 1,626 Banned Books Here's What We Found” ↗