The 50 Shades Saga Continues

My friend “J” (you remember her) finished the book. You know which book I mean. THE book. The titillating one that ladies (and men?) are reading worldwide, the wise ones hiding it on their e-readers. That book.

I went to a little get-together last night at J’s house, and she said, “Lynn, there’s a brown paper bag on the porch, and in that bag, in another brown paper (what else?) bag, is something for you. It has your name on it.”

“Ah,” I replied, catching her drift (no flies on me!). “A little door prize, huh?”

And there it was, just as you see in the picture. I picked it up on my way out, and luckily the purse I was carrying was big enough tostuff it in.

When I wrote in these virtual pages not long ago about my friend J’s experience shopping at Barnes & Noble for 50 Shades of Grey and her embarrassment around this experience, a friend of mine read the piece, and wrote and complimented me on how discreet I had been, writing about the book but not actually mentioning the content of the book other than by allusion. I wanted to tell him, and I am telling you now, that it was not subtlety on my part—it was that I hadn’t actually read the book. I had only read about it.

That reminds me of a favorite story I read once in The New York Times. An author writes a new book, and the book receives an excellent review. The author bumps into an acquaintance at a cocktail party (it’s a ways a cocktail party in these literary stories), and the acquaintance says “Congratulations on the great review.” The author responds archly, “I didn’t write the review.”

Anyway, that was my situation vis-à-vis 50 Shades—I read the reviews, not the book itself. But now I am in receipt of the brown paper package. The eagle has landed, as it were. Time to begin.

To be continued…