From the Bookshelf of Reading the Classics…

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

Start date: November 1, 2020

Finish date: November 30, 2020

Discussion: Monthly Group Read - 11/20

Why we're reading this: Winner in the poll for our November 2020 Monthly Read

[close] Winner in the poll for our November 2020 Monthly Read

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Jul 28, 2011 Amle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, read-in-english

As my book club decided to read Dracula this month and I had already read it a short while back, I went to pick up something from their back catalogue of group reads.
Oscar Wilde has been at the back of my mind ever since I was little. I remember watching a cartoon version of The Canterville Ghost that I absolutely loved and shortly after I read Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories. To my surprise I saw that the film version of The Canterville Ghost had not been altered to make it funny, As my book club decided to read Dracula this month and I had already read it a short while back, I went to pick up something from their back catalogue of group reads.
Oscar Wilde has been at the back of my mind ever since I was little. I remember watching a cartoon version of The Canterville Ghost that I absolutely loved and shortly after I read Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime and Other Stories. To my surprise I saw that the film version of The Canterville Ghost had not been altered to make it funny, as I had first assumed. I was surprised to read something that was dark and amusing at the same time. How the two things had combined so well.
This also held true for The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Dorian Gray is young and innocent and extremely impressionable. He has met a artist, Basil, that adores Dorian and his perfection muses the artist to paint the greatest works of his life. During the last sitting for a portrait, Basil reluctantly introduces his good friend Lord Henry to Dorian. Lord Henry is a man with the gift of words and he takes pleasure in observing how what he says affects the young man. He tells of the virtue in pleasure and giving in to temptation, and of the power of beauty, the divinity and genious of it.
A change comes over Dorian and when the sitting is over he is sad and angered to see the painting. He mourns that it will remain forever young, beautiful and perfect and that he himself will grow older, ugly and marked by time.

"If it were I who were to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that - for that - I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"

Dealing with vanity, passion, sin, philosophy, corruption, morality, and what a person would do if he could remain physically untouched by the passing of time as he watches the true nature of his soul take shape before his very eyes.

Wilde has a beautiful and witty language that is easy to read. Definitely something I would recommend to read in a group, or along with someone as you constantly find yourself wanting to point out phrases throughout the book. And to borrow from the preface: It isn’t a moral or immoral book. It is well written. That is all. ...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Susan from MD rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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Apr 04, 2013 Deppie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bookcase, basics, z-audible-stories-2020

I just finished a reread of this (August 2020) and I'm upping the rating from 3 to 4 stars.

It has a lot more packed in it than I remembered. Being a reread, I could notice more things. And there is a LOT in there.

A much less exhaustive experience.

I also read a different edition this time, the Wordsworth Classics one was also very good.

I still don't think I'll ever love this book. Its platitudes, its use of allusions to justify prejudices(?), its thick writing combined with saying little. And ...more

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