Let's discuss this book about a man who doesn't age and a portrait that does.

I won't be able to start this for a few days, but I"ll try to catch up if need be, depending on how fast you read.

No problem, Stacia. I'll probably start this weekend.

Maybe it'll be better this time around. : )

Okay, I can start this weekend.

Do spoiler tags work in group conversations, in case people are at different places in the book and don't want to be spoiled further ahead than they've read?

I don't think Spoiler Tags work here, so let's post the Chapter we're in at the top of our posts and those who haven't reached that point yet can choose whether to read or not.

Chapter 2

The major players ~ Basil, the artist; Sir Henry; Dorian Gray.

Basil has painted Dorian's picture. Basil is so in love with Dorian (he is equating Dorian with his artistic abilities) that he doesn't want Henry to meet Dorian. Too late. Here comes Dorian.

Henry convinces Dorian that youth is all. Dorian becomes severely depressed (within a couple of minutes?) that he weeps and says he will sell his soul if his portrait could age instead of him. Dude deserves everything he gets. What a wimp!

Chapter 2

Didn't get a chance to start until this morning but now that I've started. It's going faster than anticipated.

Petra, I felt the same way about Dorian. His "temper tantrum" had me do a double take. I understand the feeling of despair when you realize that your youth is on its way out the door and you don't want to let it go (whether or not it's related to fear of your own mortality), but he's still very young. He deserves to be slapped. Twice. And hard.

He's not even old enough to have a mid life crisis.

There are already some differences between the book and movie, which makes me think that I might be re-watching the movie after finishing this.

Oh, and sorry for the above post errors/grammar issues. I'm not seeing the edit button, only delete.

I will say that there have already been several quotable moments, and even a few quotes I've seen others use before, which I didn't realize came from this book.

No edit button!

I'd love to hear what the differences are with the movie compared to the book. I always find it fascinating what parts of a book are changed for a movie.

I totally lost where this thread was.
Dorian desperately needs to be slapped but having finished the book I would not want to be near him with a ten foot pole.

Yikes...I go away & look what happens? sheesh....I'll read really fast & hope I can catch up.

I finished.

My feeling are mixed, but I liked the book more than I'd expected to, even with the douchey characters and extreme posturing.

The more recent movie (with Ben Barnes) played up the hedonism quite a bit more than the book did, since you were curious about that, Petra. I think the end was quite a bit different as well from what I recall, but I'm going to have to go back and rewatch to see how different. For some reason, I thought I came away from the movie thinking that Dorian was trying to redeem himself for another person, which made me like him in the end, whereas I never grew to like him in the book.

Reply to post #13 (show post):
You just never can tell when things will heat up around here!

You don't need to read fast. Whenever you're ready, post what you think of the book.