Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). New York: Modern Library, 2004.

I have to run and catch a plane. I Finished! this two days ago and didn't love it. I like it, but I didn't love it. I love its opening sentence-paragraph:

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

I don't like chapter XI, its catalogue of objets d'art, its dull, litanic depiction of an aesthete becoming more decadent.

I do like the way in which Wilde seems to have split his personality into this novel's three main characters. I mean, he's written about this explicitly. "Basil Hallward is what I think I am; Lord Henry what the world thinks me; Dorian what I would like to be." It's very interesting that he puts what he would like to be at the center of the love triangle, beloved by his public and private personae. It's interesting, to spoil the end, that it's only What the World Thinks of Oscar Wilde that survives at the end of the novel.