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Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars.

Oh my. Oh my my my. The Picture of Dorian Gray.... Hm.

This was a good book, to put it bluntly. It's quite the interesting tale about "be careful what you wish for" and "don't be a dickhead, dickhead". I had exactly zero knowledge of what this was about when I started it, I just saw that it doesn't have many pages and thought it wouldn't take too long to finish. I was wrong.

My main problem with this book stemmed from my inability to keep my focus on it. It amazed even me just how incredibly easily my thoughts wandered, to the point where I had read half a chapter but had no recollection of it. This happened very prevalently during Chapter 11. I re-read this chapter three times and even audiobooked it, but for the life of me I had no idea what was going on. But that was it. Nothing was going on.

That chapter ended up being about... How do I even explain it? It was explaining the things that Dorian had newly become interested in, I guess. Basically: Nothing happened. It was words, but nothing was actually going on. There were multiple pages that contained just one huge paragraph. Not to say that it was a useless chapter, not by any means. I almost ended up just skipping the chapter all together so that I might actually finish the book, but after taking a two month break from this book I was finally able to comprehend the chapter. It ended up explaining Dorian's character among other things, so I am grateful I was finally able to read it properly.

So that was a gigantic hindrance to my reading of this book. I also had trouble with Lord Henry's many many many (did I mention many?) monologues. Boy does that man love the sound of his own voice. He had lots of opinions and you were going to hear them--and in great detail might I add--whether you wanted to or not. These were also instances when I found my mind wandering. Woe is me. *November 2018 EDIT* This is hilarious to me now, since I am literally the type of person who loves monologuing like this. I have become he who I so detested. However, unlike Henry I realize it's extremely annoying, so my family are (mostly) the only ones who bear the brunt of my endless philosophising and theories. Also, I talk to myself a lot.

All this aside, the story itself is actually quite interesting as I said earlier. Read it for yourself, I couldn't begin to say any more about it. I would just suggest you not take a two month break in the middle of it like I did. While I did find ways to keep my mind on the page, it kind of disconnected me from the characters, and the details of what happened in the first half are fuzzy.

I feel like I would have really liked this had it not been for my... Problem. Well, sucks to be me, but I recommend this to anyone. Probably not if you're a minor though; wait till you're older and your attention span is longer.

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