Fifty Shades of Grey - by E L James

I mainly read this book because I seemed to be bombarded with opinions about it and thought that it was time that I had a view. Although I know several people who will dismiss a book without reading it, I do not take that approach. Here are some things I heard about it and my take on them:

• The book is badly written. It is not brilliantly written, but it is not that bad either - I have seen much worse. I was appalled at a reference to an elevator rising at "terminal velocity". This is wrong on many levels, but no worse that the commonly cited "meteoric rise" of people's popularity etc.
• The book is nothing but a load of sex scenes. There is quite a lot of sex. It is not excessively explicit and it makes sense in context. It is certainly not like a porn movie where any hint of a story is just an excuse to have more and varied sexual situations.
• There is no story. I think that there is. It is about a couple of weeks in the lives of two young people, their attitudes to relationships and how their past and upbringings have affected them.

I will probably read the 2nd and 3rd books in the trilogy. I do, at least, want to know what happened next.