One of my current activities, however misguided, is an effort to read all the books that I should have read long ago but never actually have. You know: In high school English, you get a list of a hundred books and are told to write reports about three of them, and so you trudge through it hating every minute of each one of those books, despite the fact that they’re probably really good books. In fact, every one of the books on that list probably deserves to be read by everybody. These are the best English-language books of all time, not the New York Times bestseller list for April.
Well, I’ve just finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and it is a very good book indeed. You should definitely take the time to read this book if you haven’t. It is, of course, rife with Wilde’s trademark humorous style, which you’ll recognize if you have read any of his plays (or, more likely, seen Monty Python’s “Oscar Wilde” sketch), but will almost certainly not laugh at unless you are a 19th century British aristocrat. The real value of the book is in its actual substance. This is a good story, and it is extremely well told. I could go on and on about the content but that is best left as an exercise for you.
If you can be bothered to read it, you can find the complete text online, and you can also get a reasonably nice hardcover edition for about $10 at your local Borders.
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