50 Shades of Grey

  Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades Trilogy #1) = 50 Shades of Awful! Where to begin with this book...

I first heard about it on the Today show. As Hermione Granger said: the best way to get people to read something is to ban it.  [Older Sister says: several libraries in FL have actually refused to carry the book or have removed it from their collections after seeing it reviewed.] I haven't been able to force myself to actually finish this book, so this review may be unfair, but when I started reading it I was struck by how ridiculously similar it was to Twilight.  [Older Sister here again: this book started as Twilight fanfiction. If you don't know what fanfiction is, you're mostly lucky.]

A klutsy pale girl living in the Pacific Northwest has never had a boyfriend but mysteriously has plenty of amorous would-be suitors. She works in a sporting goods store. Her ethnic male best friend is obsessed with her, and he is also her mechanic. Her mother is flighty and careless while her stepfather is monosyllabic and stiff. She loves to read books and write but not actually participate in life. She finds it hard to eat around the man she desires while he is weirdly obsessed with food. She has an old crappy car and her "boyfriend" insists on buying her a new one, as well as many other lavish gifts that she is uncomfortable accepting. She finds that his BREATH smells enticing (seriously). He warns her to stay away from him, he is trouble, he is no good for her.

The "best" part: he inducts her into a messed up and seriously abusive relationship.  I didn't mind the Twilight books until my 12-year-old students became obsessed with them and talked about how they wanted a boyfriend just like Edward.  I used to tell them, "having a boy stalk you, kidnap you, boss you around, tell you what to eat, wear, drive, who to be friends with...That is not love and it is NOT healthy."

I now have several friends who adore these 50 Shades of Grey books and I just want to have them committed.  All I could think about when reading this book was, "what the hell happened to him to leave him so damaged?"  He's psychologically ill, the type of person that makes you shudder when they are up on the witness stand, confessing to their heinous crimes.  You run in the opposite direction.  You do not stick around to be strung up on their ceiling.  And if that sounds like fun to you...you either have a latent desire to become a social worker and it's manifesting itself as an interest in traumatized and psychologically deviant behavior, or there is something seriously wrong with you too.

Also, the writing is terrible.

Book Suggestions for the Jewish Women's Book Club

By request, a list of suggestions for book clubs.

Some Favorite Book Club Picks

If you haven't read Room, you're missing a great book. There's plenty for discussion - if the mother, and not her child, told the story of their life in one room, this would be a very different book. The writing is very important but the plot is a page-turner. (Both sisters have reviewed this book: little sister's review; older sister's review.)


I love so much about The Snow Child. The author is an Alaskan bookseller who set her first book in frontier Alaska. She started with a Russian folktale about a child born from snow and turned into a story about marriage, parenthood, and love of a land. The paperback will be out in November.

Explorations of Jewish History

The Dovekeepers is widely considered to be Alice Hoffman's best. Don't expect the lightness of some her previous books. With this book she's imagining the lives of four women during the last days of Masada.


The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance is a memoir that started out as an exploration of how a family maintained their well-curated art collection through the generations. But it ends up being a microcosm on Nazi art thefts.


OK, technically No One Is Here Except All of Us is on my to-read list (starting it tonight, actually), based on someone telling me it was the best book he's read so far this year. It's a novel about an entire town trying to hide themselves during the Holocaust.


Perhaps an obvious choice The Book Thief leads itself to discussion. How responsible were German citizens for the Holocaust? I recommend reading this alongside another "children's" book that was published at the same time: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Israeli Authors, Translated

Etgar Keret writes awesome short stories. The Goldfiles sister loves The Nimrod Flipout: Stories best. Don't be scared that he writes short stories, they're all good and you will want to read them all. If you read the New Yorker (in which he sometimes writes), you can read Etgar Keret's books. His newest translation is Suddenly, a Knock on the Door: Stories.


For a different writing style, David Grossman is highly recommended. You'll find some similar themes about the Israeli experience in To the End of the Land (Vintage International), but where Etgar Keret embraces the absurd, David Grossman explores emotions.

Missing Downton Abbey?

Nonfiction isn't always easy to read, but Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle is. Did you know that the real Downton Abbey family was involved with the search of King Tut's tomb? And that the actual Lady was an American Jew?


Unreliable narrators are rarely done well. The Lifeboat's untrustworthy narrator will lead to great discussion as will the plot. What would you do if you escaped a shipwreck only to find yourself stranded on an over-full lifeboat? This is also a great pick for those thinking about the Titanic's 100th anniversary or anxiously waiting the next season of Downton Abbey.

About the Immigrant Experience

American Dervish is the only book I've ever read that gets right the experience of being the child of an immigrant in America. We Goldfiles sisters are the daughters of an Israeli immigrant; the main character of this book is a Muslim child of Pakistani parents now living in the Midwest. For him, extremism in Islam is part of growing up and how that affects Jews is part of the story. The book is only in hardcover; The paperback comes out in September. 



22 Britannia Road is about a family separated, re-located, and re-found during and immediately after WWII. The writing is a bit literary but how the characters react to World War II is interesting.

I could recommend many other books but I'm stopping because this list has more titles on it than there are months in the year. (And I know this book club meets once a month.) Want more recommendations, for this club, another, or an entirely different subject? Feel free to email us at: goldfilesbookreviews at gmail dot com.

Hey Older Sister

How long do you think Whitey Bulger would last in Azkaban?

Just Read

I finished the 400+ page novel Pure by Julianna Baggott in about 24 hours.  As all the reviews and even the back cover will tell you, it is a "Hunger Games" for adults.  I think it's more gruesome albeit very engrossing.  The heroine is a tough, scrappy survivalist who must provide for her disabled grandfather who was once a healer (ahem, Katniss and her mother).  There is an outspoken, intuitive character whose dangerous ideas about his peoples current predicament make him an exciting hero (aka Gale).  There is also a boy who at first seems sheltered, privileged, maybe even spoiled but his extraordinary circumstances prove to be more of a curse then a blessing (sort of Peeta).  Yes, I know that these are the ingredients for the post-apocalyptic genre but still...portions seem a little too similar to Hunger Games.  Nevertheless, I definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys this genre.  Sadly, you will have to wait until 2012 for it to be published, although the movie rights have already been sold.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

The lovely and wise Older Sister turned 30 this weekend! I wonder how many books she has read in her 30 years...

Dear Older Sister,

I am going through my current book way too fast! I need some good summer reads lined up!!

What I'm Reading Now

I just bought Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris, the latest Sookie Stackhouse novel.  I haven't gotten far enough in to form an opinion, but I did really enjoy the bookstore I purchased it at!  Check out Porter Square Books, a nice small indie bookstore with food and parking!