Nov 2020 - THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde

[Andrew, moderator]

This topic is for discussion of our November 2020 group read, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

To all who voted: thank you!
To everyone: I hope you'll participate and read this selection for our book club.
For those who do: share your thoughts as you read, please!
Spoilers are allowed; add a considerate warning if your comment includes any so members have the option to skip.

A few notes on this book:
* It came in at #55 on the final Great American Read list.
* It has a 4.08 average Goodreads rating.
* It was first published in 1890.
* It is Wilde's only published novel.

The history of this book's publication is pretty interesting, and there are several versions of it available. The Wikipedia article for the novel has a good summary.

[Bridget]

Thank you for all of your research into the books we read,

[Bridget]

I read the Barnes & Noble Classic edition with an introduction by Camille Cauti. Camille has done a lot of research on Oscar Wilde and the introduction is well worth reading. The 1890's and that era seem to have been a very interesting time with "Dandyism" & "Aestheticism" being very popular at the time. Terms I had never heard before. These ideas are well represented in "Dorian Grey".

[Andrew, moderator]

I just finished the first chapter of this one. (Though my Kindle decided to mark the book as "read" in Goodreads, for some reason. I think I've fixed that.) So, far, it's pretty amusing and clever.
I haven't read anything by Wilde before, but I think I knew what to expect, just based on stuff that I've read about him and about this book. So it's not really surprising at all, but it is enjoyable.

[Andrew, moderator]

I finally finished this. My review is here, though I couldn't really bring myself to write a long review, so there's not much to it.
I'd started reading this back in April, then lost interest for a bit, and just finished it up over the last few weeks.
I did enjoy reading it, and it left me with a lot to think about.

(Oh, and I just realized that I misspelled "Gray" as "Grey" in the title of this discussion thread, and in the first post, so I've fixed that. Sorry!)