Fifty Shades of Grey
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 family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires. Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever. This book is intended for mature audiences.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
106mentions
93people
2012–2026years
1% recommend81% neutral18% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- 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.
- It doesn't have to be Shakespeare, but hopefully everybody agrees that writing at Shakespeare's level is indeed hard. I agree that writing good (but not great) or even just ok literature is still hard, but that invites a bunch of no-true-scotsman arguments that I just can't be bothered dealing with (like "writing Fifty Shades of Grey isn't actually hard" or something similar).
- >Aliens was Alien fanfiction
Just because an established Hollywood director was a fan of the first Alien movie does make his script for Alien's sequel "fan fiction".
Cameron had already written and directed The Terminator when the owners of the Alien franchise chose his script for the sequel.
(Fifty Shades of Grey in contrast really did originate as fan fiction.)
- In my understanding of literature, I went through the same arc as the poster, but then I made it to the next realization- "thickness" is just your willingness to give authors credit for things they didn't write, and it can be done just as well for works that are considered "schlock" as it can for the canon of works that are considered "great".
You can read "Moby Dick" as a story about a fish, and you can read "50 shades of grey" as a treatise on existentialism and the human spirit- it's all up to you!
- "Actually, I just pulled up your goodreads profile, and it looks like your eighth-most recent book was 50 shades of grey. In addition to having a faulty memory, you're reading work-inappropriate material. Finally, you read that in 2021, so clearly you don't care about reading /that/ much. Dismissed!"
- This is not an endorsement of the work, but there's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I hear 50 Shades of Gray is another fanfic that went mainstream.
A book nerd could come up with a much longer list, but I know there's a ton more illegal unlicensed! Harry Potter fan fic.
