50 Shades of Grey

...and NO, I haven't read it.
I've been pondering the phenomenon that IS this book. I watched the video of Ellen Degenerous reading from it and thought it was hilarious! From her reading alone I MIGHT be temped. (Might.) Although I doubt my reaction would be as comical. A friend of mine has it and said, "You have to read this!" I replied, "SERIOUSLY?!?" I do not really see myself doing that. However, I CAN understand the need to keep up with current societal trends and KNOW what the populace is reading. So maybe.

But the point of this blog is my thoughts on the book itself and not the writing of it. This is not a review.

I was in Walmart yesterday buying toilet paper. (the #1 needed household item besides air) While walking passed the books and magazines (did I use that word correctly? passed/ past? I really never know)... I noticed the display of books by E.L. James. Nice covers. I thought they were well done. But the thought occurred to me that the content might be inappropriate for a setting where any ole child could walk up and read it. So I open the book randomly to page 117 and read, "'I'm going to f*** you now Miss Steele,' he murmurs as he positions the head of his erection at the entrance of my sex. 'Hard,' he whispers, and he slams into me."

Why do I quote this? Why do I care? Because this is Walmart, family central, and this type of material is ON THE SHELF!

I'm not balking about that. I'm irritated because they can put a sexually explicit book on their shelves because it is HETERO! Where are the LGBT romance novels? Some lgbt novels I've read don't even contain sex at all but they aren't present! WHY? Because it might corrupt the values of people? It might corrupt the youth of America? (I am conjecturing here, I DID NOT call Walmart to confirm.) So instead of putting ANY books on its shelves that might promote homosexual activity amongst that masses, we'd rather just promote SEX in general.

I GET the fact that 50 Shades is a Best Seller. Ok. But wasn't Hot Head by Damon Suede a HUGE hit? It has THOUSANDS of reviews on Goodreads.com! Why isn't Hot Head on the shelves of Walmart? Oh, yeah, because it's ... gay! *gasp* AND what about the famous Something Like Summer? This book is going to be a MOVIE for crying out loud!

I have to add that I HAVE seen LGBT books on the shelves of Barns and Noble (Are they still open? Or are they out of business?) But that shelf was VERY small! Maybe 100 different titles in a monstrous store of thousands of books! I even had to ASK where to find it because it as so small of a section it got lost.

Societal trends need to change! If I can find 50 Shades of Grey at my local Library and Walmart, I SHOULD be able to find the current top 10 best selling LGBT novels as well! How does this happen? Do we solicit Walmart? I guess so. How do I do that? I don't know. I guess I will have to look up Walmart corporate e-mail and come up with a petition-letter or something.

These are just some of my thoughts along the lines of INequality that goes on. It would be FINE is Walmart said it was because of "family" values. Whatever! I get that. I don't agree with hetero's being the only ones with "family" values but I see the point where reading material is concerned. But if it is over "family" values, then I DO NOT see that 50 shades of Grey is any more healthy for people to read than Hot Head. Hot Head was an awesome book! It was popular, well written, and covered relationships between friends on a very deep level. I think that is pretty "family" oriented! (Plus is had reference to 9/11 which makes it a good "American" novel!) If Hot Head, and Something Like Summer(and other books like them), can not represent the best selling LGBT fiction on the shelves of Walmart, then why does the explicit 50 Shades of Grey get 8 shelves worth?

SO NOT FAIR!!!

this is me ranting for now.

Wade

And notice how I didn't mention how When Love is Not Enough should be on the shelves!! ;p