Fifty Shades & the LI Romance Writer's

Westhampton Monday Night Book Club & The Long Island Chapter of the Romance Writers of America discuss

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

With its explosive popularity, the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy caught the attention, curiosity and awe of millions of women and even some men around the world.  These hot little books jumped right to the top of book lists everywhere, hitting the multimillion dollar sales mark and easily surpassing the sales of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.  The overwhelming fame of the Fifty Shades series may come as a surprise to most due to its risqué content and alternative life style, but then again sex does sell! With over a thousand patrons on our wait lists throughout the month of July, we too had to check these hot commodities out for ourselves and see what all the action was about.

In an anticipatory state of mind the Westhampton Monday Night Book Club (MNBC) picked the first book in the series, Fifty Shades of Grey as its July selection.   The MNBC ladies were a bit suspicious of its erotic content and not altogether sold on its negatively reviewed qualities, yet they were just as curious about all the fanfare as the next person.  To celebrate such a highly demanded book we planned a big summer book club event in conjunction with the Romance Writers of America, Long Island Chapter.

Our July’s Monday Night Book Club, also known as Fifty Shades of Grey with the Long Island Chapter of the Romance Writers, was held on Monday, July 30th.  We had a full audience attend a panel of three women from the Romance Writers of America, Long Island Chapter, Chapter 160.  Gwen Petrarch, Patty Blount and Tuere Morton were absolutely fantastic panelists, they discuss the summer’s most talked about read, Fifty Shades of Grey,with great respect for the writing craft and with open frame of reference mind, true to their own thoughts, concerns and knowledge.

With an audience of about 60 the program was scheduled to be the better part of an hour and it was still going strong till a quarter after 9pm.  The panelists had the audience enthralled.  Both panelists and audience actively and openly discussed their views and feelings on Fifty Shades.  Discussion points revolved around the trilogy’s origination, its place within the romance or erotica genres, character analysis, content, literary merit, its breakout popularity and read-a-likes.  The panel of Romance Writers began the event by posing questions to each other, such as: can you explain what fan fiction is and why the Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy is thought to be considered as such.  They also addressed the media’s criticisms, of the book being labeled as “mommy porn” and the spot light it put on the BDSM community.  All panelists weighed in and shared opinions on the difference between romance writing and erotica.  As the evening went on the Romance Writers opened their questions to allow the audience to comment as well.  As a group they discussed read-a-likes, why some many of its readers, despite liking the book, said it was so poorly written.  Additionally, the group discussed what the most important lesson would be that men could learn from this book.  Everyone laughed and a few commented that there had been improvements in various areas.  The group talked about whether or not Fifty Shades objectified women.  Most stated that the book was more empowering to women and that the fact it addressed an alternative sexual lifestyle was why so many people were originally put off by it.  Throughout the evening many questions were raised and comments were shared on the aspect of the bondage lifestyle the book introduced.  The stigma the lifestyle implied and how it was portray was a hefty topic of discussion as well.  Furthermore, there was conversation about if the sex between Ana and Christian empowered them or diminished them.  In wrapping up the discussion the panelists posed the question “Do you think this statement is true, that the book(s) have had as much social impact on both men and women as society is leading us to believe?”

With the phenomenal Romance Writer’s panel, all the questions and discussion and a few tasty treats the event was a complete success!  We would like to thank Gwen Petrarch, Patty Blount and Tuere Morton of the Romance Writers of America, Long Island Chapter for their enthusiasm, time and wonderful insight.  Thank you also to the Westhampton Monday Night Book club for keeping an open mind, sharing their meeting space and time and for participating in the conversations so openly.  The special Fifty Shades of Grey book club was an accomplished event.  We hope to another soon!