Your Fifty Shades of Grey coverage will commence...

Next week.

I haven't been covering Fifty Shades Darker yet, but I swear, I haven't been reading anything else, either. And not for lack of trying. I downloaded about five books two weeks ago, including two zombie books, and just haven't gotten to them yet because we've been passing this virus around since we got back from North Carolina. Apparently pneumonia is going around California, too (which I assume means that three people have it because everything in California is A Thing That Must Be Reported On when it happens to more than one person), so we're just trying to take it easy. I mean, really easy. My house is a total mess. You'd think I had zombies invading the house, but no, it's just two adults who should Know Better but who have no energy to care about cleaning right now. Or reading.

So, this weekend in addition to unearthing the kitchen counters, where everything in the house is going to die (we have a bow and arrow set on the table for some reason...I think Queen Eleanore is pulling her hair out somewhere because of that), I will be taking notes for at least the first ten chapters of Fifty Shades Darker.

Also, this time, I'm going to do something a little different. Since I keep complaining that Ana and Christian have no actual "relationship" to speak of, I'm making a list of Things Ana and Christian Could Be Doing Instead Of Having Sex Now and will post one everytime they have sex in the book. The point of the list is that if they were to do those things, it would open a line of communication about themselves and help them to get to know each other better.

When I was younger, my mom always used to tell me that you need to wait to have sex with someone, not because sex was Such A Big Thing OMG (thought I'm sure she thought so), but because once you start having it, your relationship sort of start revolving around it. The longer you wait, the more you know the other person, and the more you can balance out the sex and the talking and bonding. Now, this was good advice for a young girl because until you have relationships, you don't understand how to balance them, and the only way you get to know those things is by having relationships. At my age now, and my experience, I'm pretty sure I could have sex with a guy BEFORE the first date and be able to handle and balance it all, but when I was younger? I had no way to handle that stuff. I would be the Jerk who left her girlfriends behind to hang out with a guy. My girlfriends would do the same to me. It just happens, and the only way to keep it from happening is to have more relationships.

The problem with Christian and Ana is that neither of them has had a relationship before. Ana was a physical virgin, and Christian is an emotional one. You  can see their immaturity (and by extension, the author's immaturity? Maybe?) in the way they no longer interact with anyone else. I read a book that I should review here someday, a book I really enjoyed called Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie that deals with everyone getting into relationships, but yet still having their girls/guys nights out once a week and basically keeping in touch with each other. The main character is also overweight and never goes through a Weight Loss Transformation That Will Suddenly Make Her Desirable, which I really appreciated. Anyway, people still had relationships, people still interacted with each other, and no one just stopped being a friend or disappeared on their friends because they were in a relationship now. I think that it more accurately represents how most people are once they get involved, and how it really can happen that way, and more importantly, how very, very important it is to keep your same sex friends with you. For Kate and Ana being "best friends," they hardly talk. And when they do, Kate is insufferable.

Anyway, I'll save it for the book...I know I keep ranting about the same stuff over and over, but that's because the author keeps doing the same stuff over and over.