I have read The Picture of Dorian Gray two times now. The first time I read the book was while I was in high school. I enjoyed it when I read it the first time, but I will admit that I did not understand it very well. The second time I read the book was a little over a week ago for my Gay and Lesbian Literature class. Being a little older I understood the story better. The first time that I read the book, I did not understand all the sexual references, and the references to drugs. However, this time I did realize it, and I liked how they were used.

I am really glad that I got the chance to reread this novel because I have forgotten how funny it is. I have read other writings by Wilide and have enjoyed them very much. They are always so funny and they always make fun of the society of the time period. Oscar Wilde was someone who was able to see into society from the outside, and see how ridiculous people behaved. The way he writes his characters is just so creative, and so exciting. Whenever I start a new story about him I always wonder what kind of silly things the characters are going to talk about.

Another reason why I love this book so much is because of its reference to the gothic period. If you have read my other posts, you will realize that I enjoy reading books that were written during the gothic era. I do not believe that the book is supposed to be considered gothic though. However, what else am I supposed to call Dorian's painting. The painting obviously takes on the role of the supernatural. Instead of Dorian aging the picture does it for him. The picture also absorbs all of the sins that Dorian has committed. This idea of a picture changing appearances and the person staying the same is a form of magic. In a sense, Hallward could also be considered the magician since he is the one who painted the picture. Before Dorian enters the novel, Hallward speaks very highly of him to Lord Henry. The image that the reader gets from Hallward is the image of someone who is absolutely amazing. In Hallwards eyes, Gray is a saint. Since this is how Hallward portrays him, and wants him to be, it is how Gray will stay forever. Hallward could have the power to keep people young and alive forever.

The idea of staying young and alive forever sounds wonderful. Especially during Dorian's time. Once Dorian meets Lord Henry, he becomes obsessed with his appearances. If Gray can stay handsome and wonderful looking, than he is considered doing a deed to society. However, I am not sure I would want to live forever. There is so many horrible things going on in the world, I am not sure I want to experience any more than I have to. I also do not know what I would do when all my friends got older. It would be hard to have to continue to have to make new friends. The characters in the novel do understand why people have feelings, they only understand appearances, which I find to be hilarious.

Another character that I really enjoyed reading about was Sybil Vane. I am not sure if I would call her a character in the story, or a character within the story. She is an actress who Gray falls in love with, however he does not really fall in love with her. He falls in love with her acting, and becomes upset when he realizes that she is a real person, independent of her character. I love how her last name is Vane, especially the spelling of it. The way that it is spelled tells the reader that Sybil is someone who is readily changeable. We can see this changing in all of her plays.

I think I love her character the most because in today’s society, people are judged on how they act and behave. People are no longer judged on who they are individually, but rather what they look like, who they hang out with, and the different personalities that they have. Where I am from, people are judged based on the type of sunglasses you buy, the types of bag you have, the brand of pants you wear, etc. I find this to be very annoying, as I am sure a lot of other people do as well. That may be the reason why I love this book so much. Everything that the characters say is so obscured that you just can't help but laugh. If the reader took the book literally, than how are we supposed to really look at our society? Are we supposed to ignore the different ways people act? I hope not.

As much as I loved this book, I will admit that there was a section of the book that I did not enjoy reading. There is a section where Gray goes off exploring the world. After he realizes that he will never age, he decides to do whatever he wants and he travels. I found the first few paragraphs to be interesting, however, by the time I got to the third page I was ready to throw the book down. I understand that Gray is having a wonderful time, and he is seeing new things, but I do not want to read about it. I don't know about you guys, but I am more interested in dialogue and real actions that are going on, not just descriptive paragraphs, especially ones that jump around from place to place. If there is too much description and not enough diagloge in books, I begin to zone out. It is a horrible habit but there is only so much that I can read and take in at one time. I enjoy using my imagination and finding out what happens with the characters. I am one of those horrible people who love to look at the end of the book while I'm still only half way through it.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has not read it yet. It is an easy book to read and it is very funny. For those of you who have read it, I would love to hear what you guys thought about it! I know that I always miss important/exciting things that happen in books, so if you noticed anything that I missed please let me know!

Vathek is the second book that I read in my Gothic class. As you have read in my earlier post, I really enjoyed reading The Castle of Otranto. When I read Vathek I did not enjoy it as much in the begining. The first few pages of the story were very descriptive. A lot of the characters in the story were real people at one point in history, so there was an explanation of who they were. Reading the history of the characters, the history of the religion, and reading the story was not very interesting, and it took me forever to get through the book. Even though the book is only 100 pages, it took me a full day to finish it. The way the book was written was very dense and hard for me to understand. However, once I got through the book I realized that the story was very interesting. If anyone has read Dante’s Inferno, than they might like this book. Even though the characters in this book are alive, they are destined for Hell and the reader sees the different actions and influences that made the characters considered evil. The end of the book takes place in the "hell" that was created. I really enjoyed reading that part because it was interesting to read the different ideas about hell. Dante had one idea about what Hell was like, and he wrote a whole book about it. In Vathek, Hell was described very differently from Dante's version. The set up Beckford's hell was not what someone would expect. In Vathek the hell was described as some large palace that looked beautiful inside of it. Reading about the different hells made me think about what Hell may really look like. It's also interesting to read about the different reasons why people were sent to hell. In Vathek it was pretty obvious why most of the characters were sent to hell. In Dante’s Inferno the reasons why people were sent to hell can be very debatable. I could go on comparing the two hells, and talking about them, however, there was so much more that happened in the book that was exciting.

This book, like The Castle of Otranto had the supernatural involved in the story. However, in Vathek the supernatural is what caused the characters to be evil. I was upset by this fact. I enjoyed how in The Castle of Otranto the ghosts were not evil, but they were just there in the castle, haunting people. I like to think that the magical people were either for good or just scare others, not for evil. The ideas of how the supernatural’s act in this book made me also think of the idea of having free will power. The characters did not have to do what they did. Vathek, the main character, knew that what he was doing was wrong, yet he still did it anyway. The reason why Vathek did what the magical person said was because he wanted to receive more knowledge. This brings up the idea of taking the easy way out of things. Vathek decided to be lazy, and just do what the magical monster said instead of trying to learn knowledge on his own. You can still see this laziness in today's society. When people don't know something, like a word, instead of looking in a dictionary, they just look on line. People find the easiest ways to gain the most knowledge, but they don't realize that half of the knowledge comes from the way you learn it.

There are three more stories with in Vathek but I have only read one of them. They are called episodes, and they are at the end of the book. These episodes are the stories of the four people that Vathek meets in hell. Before the characters' hearts are turned to fire, the four characters, plus Vathek and his lover, are telling the stories of why they are in the hell. The story that I read was the story of Alasi and Firouz. I am not going to go into the story because it is similar to Vathek, but I will say that it was interesting to read. The stories are so interesting because the reader can see the different stages of the characters become evil. When the stories began, the characters were good people, and liked by everyone. However, after they met their evil counterpart, the characters began to become evil themselves. The best part of watching the characters become evil, was noticing how much persuasion someone can have over someone else. It is interesting to realize that people don't do things for themselves, but they do it to make someone else happy.

If anyone has read Vathek, I would like to know what they thought of it. I would also like to know what else people were interested in when they read the story!

The best part about being an English major is being exposed too many books and authors. In my gothic literature class the first book we read was The Castle of Otranto written by Horace Walpole. Before I started the book, I thought it would be boring, since it's a book for class. However, once I started reading the first few sentences I realized how wrong I was. The book has mystery, suspense, romance, and magic. That combination makes a great book. Another reason why I loved the book so much was because all of the magic and prophecy that is included in the book can be exciting. It is always fun to imagine what life would have been like in the past, or even what life would be like if there were ghosts walking around someone's house.

Not to jump to the end, but what was so great about the book was the fact that some of the characters did not get their "happy ending". One of my biggest pet peeves is how books and movies always have their happy endings. Some movies I will admit should have happy endings. I love to watch comedy movies or little kid movies, and I like to see that the characters are happy at the end. However, some movies should not have their happy endings. Sometimes it would be nice to see the truth, that not everyone is always happy. In this book, at the end, all of the characters do not have what they want. One of the character dies while being proposed too. Another character looses his kingship and does not know what to do. I may be the only one who likes these types of endings, but I am hoping to find more like it.

I really enjoyed the female characters in the novel. I found them to be very empowering, and having control over their lives, as well as controlling the fates of others around them. It is exciting to realize that even though men were supposed to have complete control over their family, the women in the story had control and power. Considering a man wrote the book, it is nice to see that he thought women had power. He could have had the women be silent and not contribute their thoughts or actions. However, if this is how Walpole presented women in his novel, should I, the reader, feel like he has misrepresented the era of the novel? The reason why I love to read books from different time periods is because I love to learn how people lived and behaved during different times. But if I decide to read a novel from the gothic period, than I should expect it not to be a true representation of the time period.

The reason why I say that a book from the gothic period is not a true representation of the period is because there are usually supernatural or magical events going on in the story. In The Castle of Otranto there are ghosts in the castle that continue to pop up throughout the story. Reading about the ghosts popping up can be exciting, never knowing when they're going to show up. With all the supernatural things going on in this novel, has made me realize how much I enjoy reading gothic books. I enjoy everything that happened in this book, and I hope to read more gothic books and see what happens in them. I would love to hear about different gothic novels to read. I am always looking for books to read, but I am always unsure what to get. I would also love to hear what people had to say about The Castle of Otranto and their opinions of the characters.

I just finished reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. I know all about the controversy that went on between him and Opera Whinfrey when he was on her show but I still wanted to read the book anyway. I found the book to be intense, and scary but also very interesting. The book was intense because of everything James went through, and everything that he wrote down. Frey was in a really bad place in his life with all the drugs he did and all the issues he had with his friends and family. Oprah may have given him crap for making up parts of the story, but she should have also praised him for writing what he did. It must have been hard for Frey to live his life before rehab and after rehab as well. It must have been even harder for Frey to relive everything he went through and write it down. It must have also been tough for Frey since rehab is a very private thing, and now he is sharing it with millions of people. I admire him for both his novels and hope that he writes another.

However, now that I just wrote that statement about Frey, it makes me think, did Frey really care about writing his story? Maybe he just wrote the book for all the attention. That could explain why he made up parts of the story. He could have thought that his life in rehab was not very exciting and that no one would want to read the book, hence the extra parts. I wish I had seen the Oprah episode where Frey was on it so that I knew which parts were true and which were false. I think if I had known the parts that were false than I would have enjoyed the book better. The whole time I was reading, I just kept thinking to myself "is this what really happened". I would have been happier not knowing anything about the book, or knowing everything about it, but not being in between like I was. Knowing which parts were false would help me understand Frey better, and understand his way of thinking. His drug habit could have been because he needed attention in his life, and using was one way that he knew how to get it. Now that he doesn't use drugs anymore, he needs another way to get attention in his life. Writing books is another way for people to notice him.

I have just done some research to try and find what really happened between Oprah and Frey. The information is pretty interesting, and now I understand why Oprah became so upset. It seems that Frey has altered a lot in his book. However, I feel that some of the alterations were necessary since he wrote so much about different people. All the characters were based off of real people, and Frey could not have shown their true personalities for fear that someone might have realized who they were. Here are some websites that you guys can go to look at to see what went on. There is one link to MSN videos. You may have to type in "James Frey", and then some videos will show up. The other website is Oprah's. The video version of the conversation is not shown, but there is a conversation written down that you guys can read. As I read it, I must admit that I was pretty shocked of what I saw. I hope you guys enjoy the links, and please tell me what you thought about them, either individually or in comparison to the book!

MSN Link

Oprah Link

I wish I did not analyze the book as much as I just did but now my thoughts are somewhat cleared up about the book and Frey. I wish I had more incite about his life, and I know that whenever I read a memoir I am always going to wonder if what happened to the author was real or not. However, I still enjoy reading memoirs because it lets the reader look into someone else's life with no judgement, which I love doing. I hope to hear what other people thought of "A Million Little Pieces" and "My Friend Lenord", Freys other memoir. I would also like to know if anyone had any other suggestions of what memoirs to read.