Selections from Five-Star Amazon Reviews of E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey

[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.

 

Fifty Sexy Literary Alternatives to Fifty Shades of Grey

I hate to be anti-book—any book, really, even awful ones—but Fifty Shades of Grey barely qualifies as a book, and it’s utterly dreadful to think that a Twilight knockoff that started as Twilight fanfiction (!) is now sold in bulk across the world when there are so many good books out there—salacious, sexy, erotic books at that. But, like I said, I hate to knock on something when it’s more productive to offer an alternative. So: a list.

This list is subjective, occasionally weird, and hardly complete (feel free to point out what I’ve left off). I’ve only included works that I’ve read in part or in whole. I’m clearly aware that certain stuff like D.H. Lawrence, much of Updike, and infamous classics like Walter’s My Secret Life are not on here—if it’s not on here, I haven’t read any of it. I vouch for everything else.

  1. Song of Songs (Old Testament)
  2. Juliette, Marquis de Sade
  3. Justine, Marquis de Sade
  4. The 120 Days of Sodom, Marquis de Sade
  5. The Pearl, William Lazenby (ed.)
  6. The Story of O, Pauline Réage
  7. Delta of Venus,  Anaïs Nin
  8. Little Birds, Anaïs Nin
  9. Lost Girls, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie
  10. The Soft Machine, William Burroughs
  11. Story of the Eye, Georges Bataille
  12. The Garden of Eden, Ernest Hemingway
  13. Ada, or Ador, Vladimir Nabokov
  14. Fanny Hill, John Cleland
  15. Poems of Sappho
  16. Crash, J.G. Ballard
  17. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
  18. House of Holes, Nicolson Baker
  19. Blood and Guts in High School, Kathy Acker
  20. Satyricon, Petronius Arbiter
  21. “Penelope”/Molly’s monologue from Ulysses, James Joyce
  22. “Nausicaa” from Ulysses, James Joyce
  23. “Circe” from Ulysses, James Joyce
  24. Boccaccio’s Decameron
  25. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
  26. Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller
  27. Women, Charles Bukowski
  28. Poems of Catullus
  29. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare
  30. Kama Sutra
  31. Naked Lunch, William Burroughs
  32. The Ways, Caracci and Aretino
  33. Vox, Nicholson Baker
  34. Ars Amatoria, Ovid
  35. A Feast of Snakes, Harry Crews
  36. Casanova’s letters and memoirs 
  37. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
  38. Snow White, Donald Barthelme
  39. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
  40. Briar Rose, Robert Coover
  41. Frisk, Dennis Cooper
  42. Song of Myself, Walt Whitman
  43. Hotel Iris, Yoko Ogawa
  44. “Wild nights! Wild nights!”, Emily Dickinson
  45. Various selections of Robert Crumb
  46. Dream Story, Arthur Schnitzler
  47. A few choice passages from Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives
  48. Venus in Furs,  Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
  49. The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
  50. “I started Early – Took my Dog -“, Emily Dickinson