50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 3 part 2

tldnr:
Christian picks up Ana at the bar near her workplace and then they go to her condo and then they buy groceries.

As you will understand, thanks to the lateness of this post. I'm not sure that I can manage this twice a week schedule. I like the idea of covering a chapter a week, if only because that gets us to the end faster, but if I'm to maintain this level of rigor, I might have to slow down. The chapters in Shadier are longer than those of 50 Shades and also, you haven't really been talking up this blog with your friends in publishing, and as a result, I still have some day jobs that I must attend. Hence the lack of a Friday post last week. (Editor's note: also the Tuesday post was completed with more haste than we usually prefer, too.) 

Nothing to do but struggle on, though! Well, that or quit, which would be sensible. But we have never been accused of being sensible! So, we carry on. We will have, I expect, one post again this week, but may find ourselves able to return to a faster schedule as time goes on. I should mention, though, that the presence or absence of Friday posts does little to affect my overall tally of clicks for the week. In case you are wondering, my average is something like fifty, though I do have exceptional days which can vary widely in either direction. Also, I should definitely mention that mostly what I get are "false positives" from spam robots. If anyone is smarter than I am and knows how to remove these spam robots from my blogger statistics, I would appreciate the advice. I hate logging in, seeing that I got a bunch of new reads, and then seeing that they were, in fact, all spam robots. Boo.

Our story thus far:

Ana is a naive college student who dated a billionaire for a couple weeks but broke things off with him because he spanked her too hard.

1. Ana starts her new job at a publishing company and agrees to let Christian give her a ride to José’s art show. It turns out they both miss each other or whatever.
2. Ana and Christian eat steaks at a restaurant. They rekindle their “romance” and Christian says that they won’t have to have rules anymore and he won’t punish Ana. They drive back to Seattle and Christian gives Ana back the expensive gifts that she'd returned to him when they broke up, along with a new iPad.
3. Ana goes to work. She is confronted by one of Christian's ex lovers on her way out for drinks with her coworkers.

Let's see how Ana is doing at the bar, shall we?

50 Shades Shadier: Chapter 3, part 1

tldnr
Ana is confronted by one of Christian's former lovers.

Just so you know, I'm aware that a lot of these posts seem nit-picky. I know that you may read some of my complaints and say, "What's the big deal? EL James doesn't understand iTunes? Fine. Who cares?"

And yeah. Does it matter that EL doesn't understand that the songs on Ana's new iPad are available to her for use on her other devices? No. No writer is going to get every little detail right in a 1,500-page trilogy. And even if a writer were to get everything right about these little technical points, that's the sort of thing that won't matter in a few years anyway. So, for instance, Ana's excitement about the iPad already seems a little silly now that the things are everywhere. The fact that EL doesn't seem to understand how iPads work is obnoxious, but it takes more than a little thing like that to ruin a scene.

The problem with this book isn't that EL gets the occasional detail wrong. The thing about this book is that EL gets absolutely everything wrong. Ana is confused about every detail of modern life, and then most of the details about modern life that are offered to her are at least slightly askew. And as the mistakes pile on, smaller little issues start to take on added significance. A mistake that we might've overlooked if it were an isolated incident starts to seem huge.

So, yeah. It's completely insignificant that EL James doesn't get how iPads work, but when you've been suffering through all these similar screw-ups for hundreds of pages, you find yourself yelling at your book over the most insignificant bullshit.

Plus, EL James is a billionaire because of these terrible books. If this thing were just another story on a fanfic message board, I wouldn't complain in the slightest. But somehow, EL James is the most widely-read author of the 21st century, but can't even be bothered to figure out how an iPad works, and I'm pretty upset about it.

But back to our story, such as it is.

Our story thus far:

Ana is a naive college student who dated a billionaire for a couple weeks but broke things off with him because he spanked her too hard.

1. Ana starts her new job at a publishing company and agrees to let Christian give her a ride to José’s art show. It turns out they both miss each other or whatever.
2. Ana and Christian eat steaks at a restaurant. They rekindle their “romance” and Christian says that they won’t have to have rules anymore and he won’t punish Ana. They drive back to Seattle and Christian gives Ana back the expensive gifts that she'd returned to him when they broke up, along with a new iPad.

So, Chapter 3.