London, August 4 (ANI): Barbara Taylor Bradford, the best-selling author, has dismissed dubbed erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, as mediocre and juvenile.

She described the book - the fastest selling paperback in history - as nothing more than a shopping list for couples looking to spice up their love lives rather than having any literary merit.

Bradford compared the EL James novel unfavourably with classic erotic fiction like 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' by DH Lawrence and Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' - describing them as more erotic and written in a much better manner.

The author, whose 27 novels including A Woman of Substance have sold 88 million copies around the world, said that she was left a little disappointed and confused after reading the much-hyped book.

The 79-year-old described the famous sex and bondage scenes as a little repetitive, even boring - and that's despite all the sex toys and that she expected more of the latter given that that was what the kerfuffle was about.

The 'Fifty Shades' trilogy have sold more than four million copies on Amazon's British site alone since March, outperforming Harry Potter.

Centring on a university student, Anastasia Steele, and her steamy relationship with a billionaire older lover, it has been dubbed mummy porn because of its popularity among women in their thirties and forties and has celebrity fans such as Victoria Beckham and Amanda Holden.

I can't really see what all the fuss is about, the Telegraph quoted her as telling the Lady magazine.

Yes it's rather racy. There's even a pair of handcuffs. But as an author in my seventies, I can't help but think it's rather mediocre. Juvenile even, she said.

She lamented the fact that the new generation hadn't read classics of writers like Lawrence and Miller.

The book has ultimately become a guide to the bedroom for a generation that simply hasn't ever thumbed through those old erotic classics, she said.

It is, then, a very modern romantic fairytale. A young woman's fantasy. A shopping list for couples looking to spice up their love lives.

And people are reading it for that reason, not because it's a novel of any particular note, she added. (ANI)