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Splunkzop t1_j1k9d4q wrote

My mother (78) read 50 Shades and told me it was pretty tame. I said if you want to read something shocking, read this... then sent her '120 days of Sodom' by the Marquis de Sade. Hahaha, she could only read a few pages.

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LadyOfLindens t1_j1kgr2g wrote

My grandma once announced to me and some of my cousins and her daughters that she read 50 Shades and it was boring and unimpressive. We all nearly died and she was shrugging it off like it was no big deal. None of us expected her to even know about it let alone having read it… LET ALONE HAVING READ IT AND FOUND IT BORING AND VERY UNDERWHELMING

Granted she and Grandpa made 13 babies together so I guess they kept things fresh between them 😝

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Beach_Dreams2007 t1_j1kqys4 wrote

The writing is painful. PAINFUL. I couldn’t get into it because I couldn’t get past the writing.

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ezio1452 t1_j1kv6f4 wrote

The movie is equally painful. So fucking cringe.

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northerngurl333 t1_j1kv40n wrote

I read it and then needed to read a real book- like the Chinese food of literature.

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Mr_Abra t1_j1lplh5 wrote

I misunderstood on first glance and thought you needed to read a real book, like a Chinese food menu. I giggled. That was all.

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LadyOfLindens t1_j1lrhbk wrote

Ih that’s interesting to note as poor writing can definitely ruin a book! I’ve never read it myself and never intended in it so I hadn’t heard about the quality issue before.

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N7_Hellblazer t1_j1o0n4a wrote

Honestly it’s like poorly written fan fiction. I believe it was based on the writers twilight fan fiction but don’t quote me on that.

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Raichu7 t1_j1l6c85 wrote

It’s poorly written and most of the sex scenes are assault. I don’t understand why it’s so popular.

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LadyOfLindens t1_j1lrjwk wrote

A lot of poorly written material gets popular tbh. And so many incredibly written pieces get overlooked and remain mostly unknown. Sad fact of the literary world it seems!

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Atze-Peng t1_j1n22ia wrote

My great grandmother read romantic smut hybrids all her life. Don't think this stuff didn't exist back in the day

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LadyOfLindens t1_j1n4w08 wrote

Exactly! We grow up thinking we’re so modern with stuff our grandparents and beyond couldn’t comprehend but nah we’re all humans and it’s all been done to some degree in some way before XD

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Atze-Peng t1_j1nmbsj wrote

I mean, people back then didn't get to have 6+ kids by not enjoying sex.

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SilverDem0n t1_j1ktpiu wrote

>she could only read a few pages.

Well to be fair, 120 Days of Sodom is terribly written, particularly toward the end. It's a difficult read because it's actually kinda dull. Shocking, yes, but numbing too, such that it shocks less than it should.

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RandomUsername12123 t1_j1lgdvj wrote

Honestly i have read it as a teenager (only the start) and imagined everyone in it to be hot

I rarely masturbated to a book but this one... Uhm....

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poignantname t1_j1lix2d wrote

You realise that the majority of the people in the book are either children or described as being hideous examples of humanity, right?

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RandomUsername12123 t1_j1llsr2 wrote

The studs and the women are so hot tho.

And i didn't really mind the descriptions as in my mind everyone was attractive, age appropriate and it was a kink thing 😂

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MundaneRuxx t1_j1msine wrote

Who the fuck is downvoting this? All the characters who aren't wealthy men are literal children. The book spends the first 3 chapters telling the reader, over and over and over. It's half the point of the book, doing taboo things by emphasizing how taboo they are.

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RandomUsername12123 t1_j1ni8fa wrote

The book is objectively disgusting of you think of if for more than 10 seconds and the more it goes, the more it worsen

No reason to say otherwise but hey.

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wingchild t1_j1o4stm wrote

That's de Sade in a nutshell: telling you what a libertine he thinks he is, while being endlessly repetitive to make sure you remember that rules are being broken. Aims for transgressive, lands on boring. Justine is like that, too; after a while it's less "oh no, poor Justine, set upon by all these creatures of lust" and more "what haven't they done yet? let's tuck that in. Oh we did that? Let's triple it up".

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MundaneRuxx t1_j1qo947 wrote

Exactly this. I think most people who read his stuff are attracted to the taboo and hype and very quickly get gore-bored. It's not a warning sign if you've read de sade, it's a red flag if you finished de sade.

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Pinsalinj t1_j1nshfy wrote

Want a well-written book with a LOT of elaborate kinks? The Sleeping Beauty Series by Anne Rice.

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Squigglepig52 t1_j1m374f wrote

My mom used to read books like popcorn, she'd read nearly anything. We used to swap books back and forth, so I managed to get her to read Pratchett and Banks, stuff like that.

She drops off a pile and... holy shit. There's two Lustbader books, including "the Ninja".

I read them back when I was a teen. Each book is about 50% extreme ninja violence, and depraved sex. Like, I hid those books from my mom back in the day.

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repocin t1_j1pcojg wrote

There's certainly an interesting story in how that book got published (from wikipedia):

>Sade wrote it in secrecy while imprisoned in the Bastille in 1785; shortly after he was transferred elsewhere the Bastille was attacked by revolutionaries, leading him to believe the work was destroyed, but unbeknownst to him it was instead recovered and preserved by a mysterious figure and subsequently handed over to a multitude of people, culminating in its publication in 1904.

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