I always enjoy reading people's "things they are enjoying right now" type posts. They are just fun to read, I like gleaning ideas from them and sometimes it's just really nice to enjoy the good and beautiful isn't it? So I thought I would share 'Seven Sweet Things' I am enjoying right now. 1. Reading Harry Potter with my oldest. I read and enjoyed these books on my own but am so enjoying rereading the adventures out loud and experiencing them alongside his wonder and excitement. Reading them out loud with the knowledge of the whole series plot is making me appreciate how Rowling weaved such beauty into the characters relationships from the very beginning. Also how creative she was to set the plan for the whole series from the very beginning. We finished the Philosopher's Stone and are starting in on The Chamber of Secrets. We won't read all the books yet as he just turned eight but I am thinking the first three are okay for his age.

2. Watching Call the Midwife. This is a BBC drama based on a book series by Jennifer Worth about midwifery care in London in the 1950's. I watched season one when it aired on PBS last year and snuck ahead on season two when it aired in Britain. It is currently showing on PBS and was so good I'm watching again. The writing is wise, the dialogue has me writing down quotes and the characters are so real and relatable.

3. Expanding on my tea snobbery. This David's Organic Breakfast has lifted me to a whole new level. A friend gifted me some for Christmas and it has been in my morning rotation ever since. It is the perfect black tea and it really makes the never-ending winter we are having here a bit more bearable in the mornings.

4. This recipe for roasted broccoli is so good. We have been eating it a lot.

5. I have started knitting after many years of wanting to learn and learning very little then quitting. My daughter should actually have a scarf by the end of the week!

6. I have stopped going on Facebook. I haven't quit altogether as there are a few groups I volunteer with that manage things on there but unless I have to add something to those groups I haven't logged on in over three weeks. I cannot express all the ways this has made my life better. Facebook when you quit logging in starts sending you e-mails (different from notifications, which I haven't received any of for a long time.) They say things like you missed a top story: so and so commented on so and so's status. I am sure this is to make me want to log in again but ironically every time I get one I just feel more happy I don't actually know what so and so's status says. The introvert in me feels so freed and peaceful I don't know why it took me so long to cut back.

7. My baby is growing up. I have photo evidence. This day she fell down running to me in excitement in her rubber boots in a gravely area. She skinned her arms, elbows, knees, hands, one knee quite badly. A big kid injury. See how big kid her face is looking? (List this under bittersweet.)

I'd love to hear some of your sweet things too.

(Warning – language, abuse, sexual abuse.) Almost never have I not finished a book. I am a book lover, and I almost can’t bear not to know the ending of a book. Even if I am reading something less that inspiring, I usually flip ahead to the end and put my mind and the story to rest rather than just put it away unfinished, unknown.

This however, was sucking my joy.

Full disclosure: I knew nothing of the plot before I casually added this title into my vacation stack, other than hearing it was steamy. I imagined something like Nicholas Sparks or Andrew M. Greely or Jean M. Auel.

After all, I had seen women of different ages, on multiple occasions recommending this book to their friends and their sisters, in the best seller section of my local chapters. One woman I vividly remember with her two teen daughters there. I had seen acquaintances on facebook asking to borrow the second and third sequels, as they couldn’t wait to get to a book store to pick them up, they were so intrigued. I saw the Shades of Grey babies’ pinup on Pinterest. If all of that didn’t build my case for a light summer read, they carry all three books at Costco. (If that doesn’t put a book into the fluffy but harmless category, I don’t know what does.)

I hated it from page one. Anastasia (or Ana) opens by ‘scowl(ing) with frustration at (herself) in the mirror.’ 50 pages in she continues to bash her looks at every opportunity, she has met a ‘young and very attractive’ potential abuser and the writing is beyond weak and so cliché it makes me wonder how this book became a best seller.

Then I got angry. I struggled to read about half way through the book and it wasn’t only the shoddily written, ‘fucking hard’ scenes between an experienced dominator and a just college graduate virgin, that turned me off. It wasn’t the fact that she agrees to have unprotected sex with someone she has known for less than a month, and has admitted to having 15 other sexual partners, on his word that he is STD free. It wasn’t the fact that the main male character keeps buying Ana expensive stuff and ‘forcing’ her to take it. (Although to be fair these all added to my anger.) The base of my anger was there because women turned this appalling book written by another woman into a best seller.

Oh I was mad! I was ranting to my poor husband, held captive in the driver’s seat about how women have no respect for themselves, if they are going to buy like this. I was angry at women, for all the women who are suffering out there, at the hands of those of us who can choose differently for popularizing the submissiveness of women.

Because ladies, we all know this! Meeting a man who wants to 'fuck you hard, and then punish you, or 'punish you and then fuck you hard' is not romance. It is abuse! I know women in real life who have been or who are hit by the men they love for disobeying and it is not and never will be sexy! Trying to love someone enough to change them from someone who physically punishes you, when you God forbid, roll your eyes at them, wear something they don’t approve of, or see someone they dislike does not work in the real world - ever. (I am assuming that the title of the third book 50 Shades of Freed means that eventually Christian stops abusing Ana and they have a ‘normal’ relationship.) Insinuating to women through this work of fiction that the women’s desire is enough to change an abusers pattern is downright scary and deceitful.

I was livid and sick. Because this - is - real. There are women around the world being punished, beaten, raped, and pillaged and never, never, for the love of God, never, is it entertainment.

It has been four days since I stopped reading. I have processed a bit now and although I can still feel the anger, sadness is now overtaking it. There are women and men out there struggling every day to further egalitarian relationships, feminism and nonviolence and this fictional book gone bestseller feels like such a setback. I am mourning for that.

I am weeping for all the women who are out there, suffering, while a crappily written book, glorifies abuse and subordination. I have two daughters, both still really baby girls and this is not what I want for them. I can’t imagine there is a mother out there who does. So why hold it up in acclaim if you wouldn’t want your daughter playing the main role?

Women, beautiful women of the world, when can we start imagining a more creative (dare I say stimulating) future for ourselves, enough to reject this type of story? Women are strong and we are capable of changing the world for our sisters, our daughters and our sons. Let’s join together and reflect that in our fantasy life as well. Let’s partake in stories worth telling, because those are the stories worth living. Edited to add: I could continue to write about this and the issues I think it speaks to because frankly more stuff just keeps coming up with this social phenomenon, and I may or may not do that. Since I read two other good articles about this that I agree with. One was on Red Letter Christians 50 Shades of Broken - Why Do Women Fantasize About Abuse and Why I Am Not Reading 50 Shades of Grey.