I read a book! I know, it’s been a while!
It was called The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is about a man who gets a portrait painted of himself, and then because he’s super vain, he casts a magic voodoo spell on it that keeps him young forever and makes the portrait version of him age instead. Then he lives out a life of hedonism and debauchery until he goes insane from an overdose of ecstasy, throws the portrait into a volcano, and then his head explodes because the voodoo curse releases all the portrait’s pent-up oldness back onto him.
This is, as I am told, an example of “classic literature,” which I understand is a type of book that publishers keep reprinting and selling forever because it costs a lot more to write new books. It was written by Oscar Wilde, a man well renowned for his work towards creating equality for brown M&Ms and having set the world record for number of lions tamed in one hour (a record which I soon hope to break). Also on his days off he wrote plays and fairy tales.
While the story itself was engaging, the novel contained some unique views on the topics of art, love, and society which I found quite interesting at the time, and have taken to reading up a little more on such philosophies, and pondering on what they mean to me. I will no doubt lose all interest in them within three or so days, and then go back to not having anything substantial to talk to people about. Such is life.
Also, there could have been more robots and sexy ninjas. But what novel couldn’t benefit from having more of those?
The Picture of Dorian Gray excels at many things. For one, it is most certainly a collection of words printed onto paper. It also has an image on the front cover, which is soft, and to my liking. Hard covers are much too solid and pose too much of a risk of falling into my enemies’ hands and being used as a bludgeoning tool against me.
There are no blank pages between the cover and the story, however, there are two pages in a row upon which only the title and name of the author are printed. This seems somewhat redundant, as this information is already on the cover (which directly precedes these pages). This is the only fault that I could find in this novel. It is otherwise immaculate.
In conclusion: that sure was a novel.