I realized the other day that I kind of feel like I know Ana and Christian. Like they are real life people that I find completely annoying but keep hanging out with because I’m using them for my own gain. One day maybe I’ll go back and re-read all my posts to try to pinpoint the exact moment this book made me lose my mind.
I also found that if I ask myself WWAD (what would Ana do), it makes me do the opposite of whatever the answer is and feel better about myself in the process!
Angsting over a guy? WWAD? Oh, she’d keep angsting over the guy, maybe I should stop.
Drinking orange juice? WWAD? Oh, she’d probably call it divine because it’s thirst quenching. I’ll just say it’s good.
Thinking of going back to a bar with a guy who previously tried to sexually assault me at the bar? Oh, she’d definitely go back with the guy! So that’s a no.
24
I guess James figured that since she’d already left us feeling nauseated over the Tampon Removal Incident, she may as well begin the next chapter with a confusing and “deep” dream sequence. She strikes such a balance.
Christian stands in a steel-barred cage. Wearing his soft, ripped jeans, his chest and feet are mouthwateringly naked…
Christian wakes Ana up from her sexy dream of Christian feeding her strawberries through a cage while his chest and feet are sexy and naked. It amazes me how terribly written James can make a scene in which one character simply wakes up another:
Through the haze of light, I squint and see Christian leaning over me, smiling. Amused. Amused at me. Dressed! In black.
I love the random exclamation mark thrown in to emphasize the fact that he’s not naked. Ana is constantly using exclamation points in conjunction with statements that are not at all noteworthy. Someone could literally be making toast and her reaction would be, “Toast! It’s no longer bread.” Or someone says, “Hey, Ana.” and her reaction is, “Ana!” I don’t get it at all.
Oh, wait, this totally happens again two lines later.
“Don’t bother to shower, we can do that later.”
We!
Hello, Point, I’d like you to meet my friend Proven.
So it’s five thirty in the morning, and Christian gets Ana up to take her somewhere for a surprise.
As they get dressed, we find out that Ana equates possessing a pair of Christian’s underwear with owning a car, a BlackBerry and a Mac. She’s such a fucking weirdo. Maybe she and Christian are meant to be because they’re both so creepy in their own, special ways.
So they go get some breakfast, and holy shit, Ana abuses exclamation marks yet again:
Christian glances up from the small dining table where he’s eating breakfast. Breakfast!
I kind of wish I had Ana hanging around with me for a day so she could make shocked comments about stupid shit all the time. Like we’d just be going to pick up dinner and she’d gasp and be like, “Take out!” Or I’d offer her an oreo, and she’d gasp and be like “OREO!” Sounds like a weirdly hilarious day to me.
Ana play’s Britney’s Toxic in the car, and I feel irrational anger over this. I just want this book to stop ruining food and music that I really enjoy. Then Damien Rice comes on, and I’m even MORE irrationally angry because I love him too. At least she doesn’t specify a song, she just keeps saying he’s “warbling” in the background. James can’t even describe good music in an appealing manner!
So Ana gets all angsty because Christian’s ex put Toxic on his Ipod. If only Ana would ask herself WWAD, she would stop being so lame. Christian says he’s never wanted more from a relationship…until he met Ana. Then we find out more about Evil Cougar:
Elena! Holy fuck. The evil one has a name and it’s all foreign sounding. A vision of a glorious, pale-skinned vamp with raven hair and ruby-red lips comes to mind, and I know she’s beautiful. I must not dwell. I must not dwell.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Elena is an exotic name. I’ve met people with that name, or people with names very close to it. It’s like two letters away from being Elaine. Calm the fuck down, Ana. But nice homage paying to Twilight, winky wink.
What if Evil Cougar just looks like Mrs. Doubtfire or something and there’s a whole chapter dedicated to Ana trying to figure out why Christian was attracted to her? That would actually be hilarious and make this book ten thousand shades more interesting for me to read.
“So inquisitive, so eager for information, Miss Steele,” he scolds playfully.
“Oh, Mr. When Is Your Period Due?”
“Anastasia–a man needs to know these things.”
That awkward moment when Christian Grey says words that turn into sentences that are fucking ridiculous. It’s also hilarious that Ana categorizes his questions about her period as inquisitive and eager for information.
So I’m suddenly having flashbacks to when I actually read the first Twilight book and lost all faith in humanity. Christian tells Ana they’re going to go gliding and chase the dawn (as opposed to breaking dawn, I guess). I think Edward like ran around with Bella on his back one time and she said it was like flying. I’m not sure which book I find more fucking stupid, it’s definitely a toss up!
Within the span of two pages, Ana has two more of her Stupid Reactions.
Waiting beside them is a man with a shaved head and a wild look in his eye, accompanied by Taylor.
Taylor!
And:
“First we need to strap on your parachute.”
Parachute!
Also, I love that Ana had to tell us this dude with the shaved head has a wild look in his eye. I wish her reaction had just been, wild look in his eye!
Time for another pop quiz!!!
“Here we go baby!” Christian shouts from behind me.
Yup, they are still flyin. It’s a really long, boring scene, so I tried to spice it up for you guys. Cause I love ya.
HA! Here’s ANOTHER pop quiz.
I look at the stick that is jerking between my legs. Oh, no, where’s he going with this?
“Grab Hold.”
So they finally land the goddamn plane, and they make out in a field, and Ana starts telling us about Christian’s erection and how she wants to get down and dirty in this field, and then this happens:
“Breakfast,” he whispers, making it sound deliciously erotic.
I don’t know about you ladies (and gay men) out there, but I love me a man that stops a hot round of sexing in order to partake in the sexiest meal of the day–breakfast. Why accept Christian’s sausage when you can have the real thing? So they go to IHOP, and that’s my favorite part of this entire chapter. Fucking love me some IHOP, bitches!
So, yeah, obviously we’re going to read about delicious things like hashbrowns and bacon, right?
Wrong.
Oh my…sex in IHOP.
No.
Not IHOP.
Why not McDonalds? I can’t. No. WHY?
But then they don’t. Wow, that was the most brilliant move James could have ever pulled. She got me all terrified, worked up, pissed off, and then she didn’t even go through with the IHOP sex! And it made me like her just a little bit more than I did before I got so violently angry. I bet IHOP would have sued or something. They don’t want none of that BDSM nonsense going on where the pancakes live.
So la la, they go to Ana’s mother’s house, and Ana says more dumb shit.
“Of course he doesn’t ask me for my mother’s address. He knows it already, stalker that he is. When he pulls up outside the house, I don’t comment. What’s the point?
No, seriously, I wanna know, what is the point of her commenting about this to us? If she’d just skipped to the part where they showed up at her mother’s house, I would not have been scratching my head wondering how they got there. I care less about how the fuck they got to Ana’s mom’s house than I do about Jose, Bob’s golf playing, how Ray is getting on, or the Kate/Elliot love story COMBINED. That is a whole lot of not-shit-giving.
Ana’s mom and Bob prepare for Christian to come to dinner later that night (he had a business meeting, so like, he was only dropping Ana off before. Man, glad we cleared that one up.) There is gazpacho making and BBQing. It’s such a gourmet selection, I’m all jealous and stuff just reading about it.
Then Ana gets the job with that Jack Hyde dude that no one fucking remembers or cares about! But I bet he will serve as a Plot Point/Device laters (baby).
Christian has a “situation” arise. So he can’t come to dinner. Ana thinks, “The last ‘situation’ he had was my virginity. Jeez, I hope it’s nothing like that.” I bet Christian’s “situations” are exclusively related to taking people’s virginity. It’s only logical.
Ana finds out she talks in her sleep, and Christian won’t tell her what she said ’cause he wants her to tell him herself.
I bet it’s that she wuvs him. Omg, you guys. I’m not even on MY period yet and I’m all choked up and stuff ’cause this love’s for real. I bet I’ll never find a man who will passionately rip my tampons out and make love to me on tables, and it hurts. It really hurts, you guys.
But if she said it in her sleep… how is she supposed to remember? He’s going to reveal it himself next chapter, right? He’s not going to leave us hanging right?! Fucking Christian, this is serious shit.
I know right?! These kind of mysterious mysteries are undeniably compelling. It’s difficult to sleep when these thoughts are a’swimmin’ through my head.
” They don’t want none of that BDSM nonsense going on where the pancakes live.” I did a spit take with my morning tea, when I read that line. 🙂 Funny post.
Why thank you!
I thought they went back to Seattle already? did they hang glide from Seattle to Georgia? As mad as I am at James, I’m also a bit miffed with whoever her editor was. Unnecessary punctuation (Unnecessary!) and words that are not words. See comment on Matthew’s post with UST in it.
I would forgive this book so much if Evil Cougar turned out to be Robin Williams in a cake mask.
Hah that toast comment reminded me of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNBxZpxlyKA
Toast!
“Ana!” I don’t get it at all.
I think you got the quotation mark in the wrong place. Shouldn’t it be:
“Ana! I don’t get it at all.”
Haha nope the I don’t get it was my reaction to Ana’s stupidity 🙂
There should be a reissue of 50 Shades with your blogposts after every chapter. It would be a glorious book (OMG did you catch that reference?)
I’m laughing my ass off here, thank you! 🙂
Fantastic as your vision is, I don’t think Fifty Shades’s publishing company would be too thrilled about the idea. We have been looking into releasing an ebook, however.
I know I’m very late to this party, but I’m just gonna comment anyway. Why is Anastasia so flummoxed by the exoticness of Elena’s name? Has James been just calling her Ana for so long that she’s forgotten her main character’s, arguably more exotic sounding name?
I love how James is SO ignorant of American culture that she thinks we Georgians would only think to serve gazpacho and BBQ to a freaking billionaire and actually USE phrases like “Strike me down with a feather! (y’all!)” [Hey, you British worm, the phrase is “You could KNOCK me down with a feather” and it hasn’t been used in actual conversation (at least not here in the South) for decades. Ana’s mom would not be old enough to use a phrase like that; at most, she’d be, what? 60? 63?] This is just another example of how completely insensitive and insulting this woman is. As a girl raised in the South, I hate it when we get stereotyped into those “Gone With The Wind”-esque caricatures.
Ana’s mom lives near Savannah (I Googled that, because you said they went to the beach, which means she has to be living in a coastal region, otherwise it’s too long a drive from the more populated regions in central/North Georgia, like Atlanta). Savannah cuisine is a rich mix of exotic influences, brought by the Seven Seas spice trade and the settling of French immigrants to the area. Living in Savannah and entertaining a BILLIONAIRE for dinner, Ana’s Mom (idk her name and don’t care) would have been MUCH more likely to take him to dinner at one of the many finer restaurants in Savannah than to feed him BBQ at home. And because it’s a coastal region, the Steeles or whatever their names are would be HIGHLY likely to serve seafood.
We Southerner’s like to try to impress people, of course, and show them a good time that would be (we like to hope) unique to them so they will remember it fondly. A backyard BBQ would not cut it. This is something we do with family and good neighbors, not trying to impress the rich as fuck boyfriend our daughter brings home one day. They would have taken Grey to Elizabeth on 37th (ok, this MIGHT be out of their price range, because dinner there is $90 per person, but the menu varies with the season and would include a lot of fresh seafood). If that was too expensive but they wanted to treat him to the same atmosphere, they could have gone to The Olde Pink House, an 18th century mansion. Or for the pure, sheer, unmatched experience of it, they’d have taken him on a riverboat cruise. Sure, they might need to finagle a bit about the reservations with that last one, but he’s Christian-mother-fucking-Grey, so he could get it done for them to impress them with the fact that he is CMFG.
BBQ my ass. And down here, we use the Portuguese spelling, “gaspacho.” Seriously, ELJ, learn how to freaking use a search engine.
My God- I snorted aloud and am in tears. Thank you. This is beyond epic.