Confessions of a Band Wagon Reader

I gave into the impulse at the bookstore and bought the unthinkable--50 Shades of Grey. I also bought Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, to obscure the original purchase. It's probably a bad idea to buy a book that's already got the movie poster on the back of it, but I've started both of these books, and the Abe Lincoln one is entertaining and off-beat and has this strange historically authentic feel to it. I like it. 50 Shades of Grey is also interesting, if only in that the same six things happen over and over and over.

1. She blushes.
2. She bites her lip, causing him to have to restrain himself from leaping on her.
3. He runs his hands through his perfect hair.
4. She mentions her inner goddess.
5. They perform sexually transgressive acts that are the equivalent of dying your hair purple--at the heart, there's nothing truly that shocking going on.
6. He buys her something huge (a laptop, an Audi), she resists taking it, and then she capitulates. 

That's it. But since I've lately been wrestling with the idea of trying to write a novel, at least she's done it--she's written three books, all of them with the same basic idea, and she's done well with them.  No doubt someone will option this as a movie within the next ten seconds. It would've been good if she had an editor to help her along--to ask her to include more concrete details, to develop the characters further, to add some layers of plausibility, to consider ix-naying the inclusion of emails. But she at least keeps it in scene and tries to make sure there's conflict...Does he love her or is he just using her? We know from the very start that of course he's going to fall in love with her--the foreshadowing isn't subtle--and my guess is that the tables will turn at some point, so  more than anything, it's an escapist romance fantasy. A pretty boring one overall though.