[Editorial note: E.L. James’s novel Fifty Shades of Grey has 13,439 five-star Amazon reviews. James Joyce’s novel Ulysses has 643 reviews on Amazon (that’s total reviews). See also. Below are some selections from five-star reviews of Fifty Shades of Grey].
I was infected with this book
I have read more sex phrases in other books.
I didn’t really even read books! But this is the best book I ever read! read all 3 in a week!
These would be the books I’d take if I was gonna be stranded on a island for the rest of my life.
I read all 3 of them within a week and a half. All while working and going to school and having to do bible lessons.
I’m not a person who likes to read but….
Awesome book for men and women!
I am uberly happy with my purchase
Classy read with a great story line.
The language is extraordinary
The almost primitive style writing, like reading ones journal of secrets, evoked the feelings the characters felt, to me the reader.
There is some parts that are kinky but the story behind it is great.
As a budding author, I appreciate the brilliant usage of the first person.
It isn’t extremely well-written
I red it under 2 days
The product seems well written for the purpose and suitable for the intended purpose and my woman loves the attention she gets as she reads her favorite passages.
People are just judging it for the sex scenes and bad grammar
My inner goddess was sooo funny that she kept me laughing.
My husband was even happy to help watch the babies while I was reading these books.
There’s an actual story in there. And it’s not half bad.
The books skips over frivolous details and gives just enough to visualize and get to the plot.
Let’s face it, all men are f***ed up.
Read a few pages and reminds me of when I was a kid reading penthouse forums stories but whatever, it works!
Love it its the best I ever read if people dont like why the fu.k are they they reading in seeing bad reviews if dont like why u waste ur money
As a mental health professional, I found the characters’ development accurate and fascinating.
I’ll indefinitely recommend this novel.
I truly wish my ex-mormon husband would read these.
This book reminds me of “Pretty Woman” where every girl wanted to be a prostitute and be found by Richard Gere.
Charming & indulging, every sentence manifested into a heart reaching symphony of lust then, love.
Some call it a slut book but I have found it enteresting
I don’t understand how anyone could say something like this bad or terrible.
The BDSM is less than 2% of the book.
I heard about the book on Dr. Oz TV show and how it helped women in menopause.
These Children are afraid to love
It’s definitely a Twilight Fan Fiction novel.
…. wow – the power of words !
I’ve never read a complete novel book, but when it came to Fifty Shades of Grey I finished it in 4 days!!
Would it be as great of a love story without the sex parts? I do not think so, because it is the sex parts that are vital for the unraveling of the story.
This trilogy is BY FAR the best books I have EVER read. I’ve read a LOT of books
I have been up two nights in a role reading this book
For those that say the grammer is bad, what book have you read that had perfect grammer? If the grammer is perfect then the book has no story. It is the grammer that makes us feel like we are in the setting in the book.
Juicy
Not for children though.
Conjure up some last-minute romance. In the appendix to her collection of Florida folktales, Mules and Men, author Zora Neale Hurston offers up a host of Hoodoo, including the following love spells:
TO MAKE A MAN COME HOME
Take nine deep red or pink candles. Write his name three times on each candle. Wash the candles with Van-Van. Put the name three times on paper and place under the candles, and call the name of the party three times as the candle is placed at the hours of seven, nine or eleven.
TO MAKE PEOPLE LOVE YOU
Take nine lumps of starch, nine of sugar, nine teaspoons of steel dust. Wet it all with Jockey Club cologne. Take nine pieces of ribbon, blue, red or yellow. Take a dessertspoonful and put it on a piece of ribbon and tie it in a bag. As each fold is gathered together call his name. As you wrap it with yellow thread call his name till you finish. Make nine bags and place them under a rug, behind an armoire, under a step or over a door. They will love you and give you everything they can get. Distance makes no difference. Your mind is talking to his mind and nothing beats that.
TO BREAK UP A LOVE AFFAIR
Take nine needles, break each needle in three pieces. Write each person’s name three times on paper. Write one name backwards and one forwards and lay the broken needles on the paper. Take five black candles, four red and three green.
Tie a string across the door from it, suspend a large candle upside down, It will hang low on the door; bum one each day for one hour. If you burn your first in the daytime, keep on in the day; if at night, continue at night. A tin plate with paper and needles in it must be placed to catch wax in.
When the ninth day is finished, go out into the street and get some white or black dog dung. A dog only drops his dung in the street when he is running and barking, and whoever you curse will run and bark likewise. Put it in a bag with the paper and carry it to running water, and one of the parties will leave town.
Anne Tyler’s novel A Spool of Blue Thread is new in hardback from publisher Random House. Their blurb:
“It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon. . .” This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture. Abby and Red and their four grown children have accumulated not only tender moments, laughter, and celebrations, but also jealousies, disappointments, and carefully guarded secrets. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century, here are four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their anchor.
Brimming with all the insight, humor, and generosity of spirit that are the hallmarks of Anne Tyler’s work, A Spool of Blue Thread tells a poignant yet unsentimental story in praise of family in all its emotional complexity. It is a novel to cherish.
Cats.—I have already described the actions of a cat, when feeling savage and not terrified (fig.9). She assumes a crouching attitude and occasionally protrudes her fore-feet, with the claws exserted ready for striking. The tail is extended, being curled or lashed from side to side. The hair is not erected—at least it was not so in the few cases observed by me. The ears are drawn closely backwards and the teeth are shown. Low savage growls are uttered. We can understand why the attitude assumed by a cat when preparing to fight with another cat, or in any way greatly irritated, is so widely different from that of a dog approaching another dog with hostile intentions; for the cat uses her fore-feet for striking, and this renders a crouching position convenient or necessary. She is also much more accustomed than a dog to lie concealed and suddenly spring on her prey. No cause can be assigned with certainty for the tail being lashed or curled from side to side. This habit is common to many other animals—for instance, to the puma, when prepared to spring; but it is not common to dogs, or to foxes, as I infer from Mr. St. John’s account of a fox lying in wait and seizing a hare. We have already seen that some kinds of lizards and various snakes, when excited, rapidly vibrate the tips of their tails. It would appear as if, under strong excitement, there existed an uncontrollable desire for movement of some kind, owing to nerve-force being freely liberated from the excited sensorium; and that as the tail is left free, and as its movement does not disturb the general position of the body, it is curled or lashed about. Continue reading “On the Special Expressions of Cats — Charles Darwin”
I don’t know why it was so strange to hear William T. Vollmann’s voice on NPR as I drove into work this morning. Maybe because I have Vollmann on the brain (I’ve been in the middle of a long email interview with the editors of the recent volume William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion). Or maybe it’s just that it seems so rare these days to hear the opinions of a novelist given a platform on popular media. Still weird though (even though I heard Vollmann on the radio last year too). Anyway, he was on NPR this morning, speaking to David Greene about his forthcoming article on the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdown in next month’s Harper’s. From their disucssion:
David Greene: William Vollmann, I’m just curious. The last time we spoke we talked about how the FBI thought you might be the Unabomber. You’ve traveled with mujahideen, you’ve smoked crack with prostitutes in California. I mean you have a certain style your reporting where you want to be in the middle of something so to speak and here you’re exposing yourself to radiation. What drives you?
William Vollmann: Well, one time read an E.O. Wilson book about the ants—
DG: E.O. Wilson—you’re talking about the famous Harvard naturalist and professor right?
WV: That’s right, yeah. He says that it’s common in ant colonies for the older female ants to take more and more risks. They’ve already reproduced, and if they don’t come back it’s no real loss to the ant colony. And I’m an older person, I’m 55, I’ve reproduced, I’m going to die in any event, so I have less to fear. And I would really like to try to do some good in the world before I die, and you know, if I get cancer as a result it’s no real loss. The more I see of the disasters that nuclear power can cause, the more I think, I would really like to describe this and help people share my alarm.
![Ticket of admission to a lecture by Walt Whitman on Abraham Lincoln," initialed by Whitman at lower right. Lecture "to be delivered on Thursday, April 14th [1887], at 4 o'clock P. M., in the Madison Square Theatre, New-York."](http://images.nypl.org/index.php?id=m_1221581&t=w "View Smaller Image")
Biblioklept 