Can't stop gushing about E.L. James' deliciously dirty novel Fifty Shades of Grey?
Then best to stay away from the Brevard County Public Library system—"all of a 'handful' of copies" of the erotic thriller were yanked from the county's library stacks last week.
"It's quite simple — it doesn't meet our selection criteria," Cathy Schweinsberg, library services director told The Palm Beach Post.
So, what's the reasoning behind removing the wildly popular trilogy that's currently dominating the New York Times bestseller list?!
Porn.
Yep, apparently the graphic nature sent a few conservative libraries into a sexual tizzy when they stocked the shelves with the pornographic prose before fully realizing the S&M content:
"Nobody asked us to take it off the shelves. But we bought some copies before we realized what it was. We looked at it, because it's been called 'mommy porn' and 'soft porn,' Schweinsberg explained before adding, "We don't collect porn."
But is it really fair to dub the trilogy 'porn'? True, the sadomasochistic saga is hardly Pulitzer Prize-winning material, but the fact that it has become such sensation should probably account for something, right?
What's more, the Brevard library catalog doesn't exactly sport a clean shelf of content. The Palm Beach Post reports that copies of The Complete Kama Sutra are available through the Cocoa Beach, Mims/Scottsmoor, Palm Bay and Titusville branches. Readers can also find copies of Fanny Hill, Tropic of Cancer and Lolita countywide.
So what makes Fifty Shades so much more sexually charged that it simply can't be on library shelves?
"I think because those other books were written years ago and became classics because of the quality of the writing," Schweinsberg said. "This is not a classic."
And we agree, the story is anything but a classic piece of literature, but it is, no doubt, a national sensation. It's sold more than three million copies in all formats and author E.L. James recently nabbed a spot on Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World list. SNL even took on the novel last weekend in a hilarious parody for Mother's Day, proving how just how insanely popular mommy porn's become.
So Brevard County Public Libraries, we say get with the program and give horny readers a taste of what they want.
A major motion picture's in the works and it's the hottest trilogy since Twilight. So what if it's a little dirty? Maybe a little porn is just what we (and especially those librarians) need.