I'll confess: I haven't gone near the 50 Shades of Grey books. It's not that I don't love a trashy read - au contraire, mon fraire. I usually just wait for the mass-pop books to morph into movie franchises. Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, etc.

So it wasn't till a friend texted me photographed pages of 50 Shades that my brain stuttered in horror.  No, it wasn't the filthy, deviant sex. It was the horrific sentence construction, the bland word choice and cliche of a plot. 

Ergo: if you want a sleazy read but prefer something well-written, try one of these. It's not a definitive list, just something to wet your beak. 

1. Hotel Iris - This is the bondage book you really ought to be reading. Penned by Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa, it's the story of a relationship between an underage girl and a cantankerous translator in a Japanese shore town. An ending like a torn shirt in a rain storm.

2. Myra Breckenridge -  Gore Vidal's gender-bending sex romp that conservatives hailed as utter pornography. Considered by some as dirty as our next choice, which you may have heard of . . .

3. Lolita -  Sex by one of the Russian Greats, Vladimir Nabokov. Has something so wrong ever been so right?

4. A Sport and a Pastime - Set in France, James Salter's slim novel documents an affair between an American student and one of the locals. Or does it? The most sensual book I've ever read.

5. Lady Chatterly's Lover - The original 20th century sex manifesto and primal scream against societal norms by D.H. Lawrence. I'll say no more.

A curiosity emerged yesterday with the announcement of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize awards: No prize was given this year for fiction.

That means Denis Johnson, a North Idaho author whose Train Dreams was shortlisted as one of three finalists, will have to wait for another shot at the prize. 

The last time Pulitzer judges declined to award a fiction winner was in 1977, according to the Daily Beast. Check their write-up of the flap here.  

In late March of 2010, The Inlander published a story about the nagging nuisance of phone directories, and how citizens statewide were calling for the death of the dated technology. 

Phone book haters: Your wishes have been granted. The Spokesman-Review reports that Washington state lawmakers and phone book publishers have agreed to print opt-out information on the covers of their directories. But you don't have to wait for a phone book to arrive on your doorstep. Visit YellowPagesOptOut.com to opt out of receiving one.

According to reports, the fight isn't over. White Pages: You're next.

Just in time for the tail end of the U.S. Olympic women's boxing team trials comes a visit from boxer, trainer and boxing club owner Gail Grandchamp. She'll be at Auntie's Bookstore tomorrow, Sat, Feb. 19, to sign copies of her memoir Fighter With a Heart.

The ladies currently fighting for a spot on the U.S. team essentially owe their careers to Grandchamp. After all, it was she who spent 8 years tangled in a court case, fighting for the right for women to box as amateurs in her home state of Massachusetts. This ruling then led to the U.S. Amateur Boxing Federation making amateur female boxing legal nationwide.

By the time the court case was over, Grandchamp had surpassed the 36 year age limit set for amateur boxers. That didn't deter her dreams though; she went on to make a name for herself as a professional boxer, earning a 12-5 record before leaving the sport in 1997.

Though she no longer fights professionally, she is never far from the ring, training young athletes in her Grandchamp Boxing Club and Fitness Center in Massachusetts.

With all Grandchamp has accomplished, could she have a more appropriate last name?

Gail Grandchamp will sign copies of her memoir Figher With a Heart Sat, Feb. 19 from 11 am to 1 pm at Auntie's Bookstore, located at 402 W. Main Ave. For more information, visit www.auntiesbooks.com or call 838-0206.

Some people write about wizards or space robots or sexually repressed vampires. Others choose to write about average people. Antonya Nelson is one of those authors who, instead of reaching for the fantastic, opts to profile the ordinary. That's not to say her stories are hollow, though. In his review of her 2009 short-story collection Nothing Right, Adam Kirsch of The New York Times called Nelson “a writer who isn't afraid to remind us of the familiar, who values insight over epiphany.”

Therein lies the beauty of Nelson's style — the morals and moments reserved for fantasy heroes are instead soaked in normalcy, yet are no less able to resonate with readers. Not everyone is on the Nelson train, however. She made a Huffington Post list of “The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers,” which criticized her use of dysfunctional characters.

In any case, Nelson has publications like The New Yorker singing her praises, and with all the guest lecturing and publishing she does, it sounds like dysfunction functions quite well for readers.

Antonya Nelson reads tonight at 7:30 pm in Gonzaga University's Cataldo Hall (502 E. Boone Ave.). The event is free to the public. Visit gonzaga.edu or call 313-6681 for more information.

A federal judge dismissed Dex One’s lawsuit against the City of Seattle’s Yellow Pages opt-out service, ruling that it does not violate the First Amendment, as several phone book companies argued.

“The route the City of Seattle has chosen to take is completely unnecessary,” Local Search Association President Neg Norton wrote in a statement Wednesday. “Seattle taxpayers should be outraged that the City continues to waste its resources on a system that is unnecessary and, we believe, illegal.”

The lawsuit was filed in May when Seattle launched its Stop Phone Books website. Phone book companies argued that directories provide community and political information in addition to ads and commercial information, comparing yellow pages to newspapers. The Inlander earlier looked into the growing controversy of phone books ("Paper Cuts," March 31, 2010).

The phone book companies argue that the city’s website will not protect privacy as well as their commercial site, www.yellowpagesoptout.com.

“We believe that the city’s redundant site is not necessary and is unfairly leading residents to believe it has spent the government’s time and the taxpayer’s money on something new…” says Norton in a statement.

But in his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge James Robart said that phone books are commercial speech, which has less protection under the Constitution.

The ruling comes shortly after state Rep. Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, announced he would introduce a bill to take the opt-out registry statewide in 2012.

According to a statement, publishers intend to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.

“Tonight we got cash money. What the f--k indeed,” announced hostess Taylor Weech to the screeching crowd gathered in the main ballroom of AClub last night. Weech and 50 or so others were there for the latest installment of the Spokane Poetry Slam finals. Said cash was a welcome addition — previous slams featured only candy as prizes. That, plus the live music, booze, a rowdy audience, and the rise of an unlikely champion made for an event that was less “poetry” and more like a sporting event.

But slams truly are the sporting events of the poetry world. Poets perform one piece in each of two rounds. The pieces are strictly timed and contestants lose points for going over. Random audience members grade each poet, and scores are announced immediately afterward, making for a pretty intense showdown.

Last night's seemed especially so. It was the penultimate round of the finals, meaning many poets had already been eliminated and the competition was getting steep.

There was a lot of love, some deep-seated hate and a nice splash of humor. After the scores were tallied, however, the night produced a surprising victor. Molly Fitzpatrick, an 18-year-old Running Start student who often reads about her activism work, beat some of the area’s more established poets (including one from Spokane’s first poetry slam team), despite having written and performed poetry for less than a year.

“I did not think I was going to win,” says Fitzpatrick (pictured), who plans on using her $20 prize money to buy food. Despite the starving artist lifestyle, Fitzpatrick says she’ll keep doing her poetry in the area. She’s going to Eastern next year on scholarship to double-major in psychology and women’s studies.

You can check out Fitzpatrick and others in the final final round on June 14 at 7:30 pm at Aclub, where winners will duke it out for the championship and an unspecified cash prize.

As a part of the New York Times team that wrote the series “How Race Is Lived in America” back in 2001, Egan earned his place up there as a Pulitzer winner with Roger Ebert and Rodgers and Hammerstein. The Big Burn, a historical review of the Great Fire of 1910 that burned across Idaho, Washington and Montana and the political battle between Teddy and Taft that raged in Washington, D.C., is Egan’s most recent work.

He’s in town tonight promoting his nonfiction novel. Any fan of American history and/or great writing shouldn’t miss this opportunity. If you haven’t already snatched up and digested your copy, Auntie’s Bookstore has you covered. So hop in, claim ownership of The Big Burn, spill coffee on it to make it look like you’ve owned it since its release last October, and take your seat.

The free event at the Bing Crosby Theater starts at 7 pm. Call 893-8205 for more.

The powers that be at Auntie's Bookstore will throw the doors of their new location (in the skywalk of Riverpark Square in the old Children's Corner Books and Toys location) wide open on Friday. But for now, they're just sort of cracked opened for their "soft opening." We wandered by the new location this afternoon to check it out. Right now it's a sparser version of the big store down the street, and not everything's ready for business just yet (there were pieces of tape tagging the genres on some shelves). But by Friday, we're sure everything will be sparkling and ready to go. 

All day on Friday (Aug. 13) customers get 20 percent off their purchases. Patrick McManus (The Double-Jack Murders) signs books on Saturday (Aug. 14) at 2 pm, and Jess Walter (The Financial Lives of Poets, Citizen Vince) signs at 4 pm.

You can go sniff around now, but if you're like us, you're waiting until Friday to get that sweet 20 percent off.