fifty shades of gravy: the cookbook – i m pliant

Fifty Shades Of Gravy

I was contacted by one of the authors of this little book of delights due to my review of THAT book. (If you hadn’t already guessed, I M Pliant isn’t a real person…shame!)

This is a perfect stocking filler (ooer) or Secret Santa style gift – especially for those women who loved (or hated) THAT book.  In fact, when I showed it to a couple of the guys at work, they wanted to get it for friends.

As with all recipe books, it is split into sections – cocktails, canapes, light bites, big dinners and desserts.  Every single recipe has its own double entendre title. Posh Tart With Crabs, Gently Jerked Pork, Force Meat In The Hole, The Disappointing Chipolata, Game For Anything Pie…the list goes on

Every recipe also comes with its own description – which is generally highly entertaining…funny rather than erotic (a bit like Fifty Shades of Grey).  For example, within the recipe for “A Quick Hand Shandy” we have a fun tip: “As your Hand Shandy is in the making, daydream about jugs – try and serve up frothy pint’s worth in an old man’s style dimpled ‘jug’ glass or ‘working man’s tankard (sometimes called a ‘Wankard’).”

Many of the recipes themselves, far from being just for fun sound extremely tasty.  I quite fancy the idea of munching on Swollen Purple Bell Ends. Yum!

If I have any crticism at all, I think it would be that it seems to have been put together by blokes as the dessert section seems to be for the puns rather than the dishes which feel a little less inventive and yummy-sounding than the other sections.  But hey, it’s worth it for the laughs.

I thoroughly recommend it – maybe not as a pressie for your mum, but for that mate that loved THAT book and you felt obviously needed more in their life

There are no pictures of the glorious products of these recipes, but then some things really are better left to the imagination. Aren’t they?

my 5 most disappointing reads of 2012

Following on from my last post listing my 5 most memorable reads of 2012, I bring you the 5 that I read so that I can make sure that YOU don’t have to!

The Pleasures of Men by Kate Williams:  One of the most misleading book covers I have encountered.  One of the most misleading titles too!  If I had been looking for a history lesson, I probably would have appreciated the creative way it had been delivered, but I wasn’t looking for a history lesson. I was looking for a novel, and unfortunately they make me expect believable characters that act believably, a plot, and some form of conclusion.

Promise Me Eternity by Ian Fox:  I cannot stress how grating I find clunky dialogue.  Nobody speaks the way that they do in this book.  And what happened to the plot?

In Search Of Adam by Caroline Smailes:  I am not one to shy away from books covering difficult subject matter, in fact I will often seek them out to see how they are handled.  If this had been the first such book that I had read, I would probably never have read another.  Depressing and yet somehow smug – it felt too much like it wanted to be ‘worthy’.

Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander:  It really was a toss up between this and Twelve Months by Steven Manchester, but this won through in the end!   A novel that thinks it can get by with just one idea and then churns that idea out over and over again, thinking that it’s enough to make you think there is a story in there somewhere. No!

Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James:  “Oh my!”, did anyone see this coming?  One of my most visited blog posts this year.  I am so proud that I managed to force myself right to the end of this.  It shows that I have more stamina than I give myself credit for.  A bit like Anastasia.  Although my outspokenness about it means that I obviously don’t bite my lip quite as much as she does.

There was one other book that should have made the list, but I have refrained from actually posting a review as it was written by a client, and well, that could put me in an awkward situation…however, I did give it a lowly 1-star review on Goodreads, if you’re a friend of mine on there

fifty shades of grey – e l james

Fifty Shades Of Grey

Tonight I achieved something that for the past three weeks I believed was going to be completely beyond my capabilities. I actually finished Fifty Shades Of Grey, and honestly, you would not believe how proud I am of myself to have battled through to the end!

No doubt like many (mostly) women that have picked up this book, it was out of idle curiosity – I wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

I also needed to use an Audible credit, and thought ‘What the hell!’.  That was probably mistake number one.  If you haven’t yet read the book and you haven’t got decent enough friends to warn you off reading it, then please PLEASE don’t be tempted to get the audiobook!

I have no idea who Becca Battoe is – and I am sure she’s an absolutely charming woman, but she has one of those drawly American voices that is toned at exactly the right pitch to get on my nerves. I had to listen at x1.5 speed just to make it in ay way bearable to listen to.  Her accents for all of the men were absolutely awful!  And to be honest, I would be really surprised if she had read the book beforehand – she seemed to be completely unaware as to how each sentence was constructed and kept putting the inflection on the wrong words.  The end of sentences often sounded like a hasty addition.

But, to be fair to Ms Battoe, that could have been mainly down to the awful, clunky writing.

As I listened to this as an audiobook, I wasn’t able to mark out sentences to refer back to and quote — and that may be a good thing as I think it would have just made me really cross.

WARNING:  this may (will) contain spoilers and rants!

Repetition (of words):  This is just within the same sentence – no wonder Ms Battoe had so much trouble reading them out. think “The bright light was really bright in my eyes” – obviously not a direct quote, but there were many instances of this kind of word repetition within a sentence.

Repetition (of sentences etc): Honestly, the book could have been cut down to less than half its length if you took out all of the times the following were used “Holy shit!”, “Holy fuck!”, “Holy crap!”, “Holy cow!”, “Oh my!”, “He looked so hawt / it was so hawt” (I believe it’s actually hot, but I was subjected to the drawl), “My inner goddess…”, “My subconscious…”, “His long fingers…”, “His grey eyes…”, “His mouth set into a hard line”, “His eyes darkened…” and there were probably a hundred more that I am trying to banish from my memory.

His grey flannel trousers and white linen shirts: Yes, I get it. If I heard one more time that his trousers hung of his hips in ‘that’ way, I was going to throw my phone across the tube carriage.

His tousled/unruly copper hair:  Yes! he has hair! A lot of men have. Does it really have to be mentioned about three times a chapter though/ (There are 25 chapters by the way!)

His ‘Christian smell’: I guess anyone called Christian would smell like Christian – and that doesn’t mean that they are all going to smell the same.  There is no such thing as a Christian smell. And to be honest, people don’t smell the same ALL the time – especially not men, in my experiemce!

Rolling eyes and biting lips: Ok, it’s all a bit bosom-heavey but does anyone really bite their lip that much?  And does a 21 year old recent virgin biting her lip really drive a 27 year old man with a vast, murky sexual history to distraction?

Blinking and eye-widening: Honestly, I have never known a cast of characters so lost for words. And I have never known a narrator so conscious of their own eye-movements. There were countless times that I read / heard “I blink at him”. This is actually code. Code for “The author couldn’t think of any dialogue”.  The same goes for eye-widening. Everyone was at it. they never seemed to voice their surprise, they just widened their eyes. From Kate widening her eyes when Christian asks Ana for a coffee, even though she’s kept sdaying he obviously fancies her to Christian himself widening his eyes that Ana doesn’t like to be punished, in the same way he doesn’t like to be touched. Really? this is shocking news from someone who was a virgin little more than a week ago?

When does he do any work? From the moment that Ana meets him, he is stalking her, calling her, emailing her, seeing her or arranging gifts for her with no regard for the time of day. How does he make his money? When does he run his multi-million dollar business that he’s somehow made at his young age.

Ana’s total lack of understanding of human nature: she seems to do things purposefully that she knows winds him up and then can’t understand why he gets wound up.  She mentions that she knows that Jose fancies her, but then when they’re both drunk and he makes a clumsy pass at her, she is absolutely horrified and can’t work out where that came from.  she has really rubbish dreams which aren’t exactly steeped into mysticism but she can’t work out why she’s having them. I am in a cage and Christian is feeding me strawberries…why? Erm, because he tied you up, bound you, and keeps telling you off for not eating and trying to force you to?  *sigh*

Fifty shades of grey: You could almost tell the moment that the author had decided on the name of the book – just over halfway through I’m guessing, as suddenly the term ‘fifty shades’ was used regularly throughout the rest of the book.

The contract:  Oh, the contract.  The boring contract that is actually completely irrelevant to the book really.  And parts of which are repeated 2-3 times throughout the book.

Have I mentioned the repetition?

And finally (as I can’t bear to waste any more thought on this book), the emails:  This is really just from the audiobook really.  If I had been reading it myself, I would’ve skipped over the to’s and from’s but with the audiobook, the lovely Ms Battoe read out EVERY to, from, subject heading, time and signature! argh!!

This book made me constantly roll my eyes in despair – and I just wish that someone had taken me over their knee to give me the distraction I needed to stop reading it!

The writing was awful, the characters were unbelievable (yes, I know that this was written as a Twilight fan-fic, so Ana is based on Bella and the unruly copper-haired Christian was actually Pattison-vampire), and the sex, ugh! I have read many MANY erotica books, and I can honestly say that this is one of the least erotic stories I have ever read.  Perhaps it was just because the writing was so awful it was putting me off.

And it doesn’t end.  No, no, no, don’t be silly.  It comes to a very sudden stop because guess what? There are TWO more books to subject yourself to. If you’re that way inclined, so why bother writing a proper ending to the first book to give some sense of finality, just pretend that it’s a third of the way through the story!

I wanted an ending, dammit! I deserved an ending! I made it to the end! For that kind of achievement, I should’ve got a dom/sub of my own to play with for a few hours. (I wont tell you which one I would prefer, I will let you work it out for yourself…)

Of course, if you’re still curious, give it a go, it may suck you in but I personally found it just one shade of brown. A shade I refer to as shite.