BREVARD COUNTY, Fl. — "Fifty Shades of Grey," the BDSM romance novel from newcomer E.L. James, may be whipping up big sales for retailers of erotic fiction, but the New York Times bestseller won't be hanging around Brevard County's public libraries.
“It’s quite simple — it doesn’t meet our selection criteria,” Library Services Director Cathy Schweinsberg told FloridaToday.com. "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.’ We don’t collect porn.”
FloridaToday notes, however, that some of Brevard County's libraries do carry erotic literature, citing “The Complete Kama Sutra,” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Fear of Flying,” “Tropic of Cancer” and “Lolita” as examples.
"I think because those other books were written years ago and became classics because of the quality of the writing,” Schweinsberg noted. “This is not a classic.”
"Fifty Shades of Grey" follows the kink-fueled love affair that develops between 27-year-old billionaire Christian Grey and his submissive conquest, a 22-year-old college virgin named Anastasia Steele.
The book's phenomenal success is comparable to that of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" and Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy. A film adaptation is already in the works at Focus Features/Universal, as is a porn parody from Adult Source Media.
