You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.41 AVERAGE
3.41 AVERAGE
this book was truly something else. and not what I was expecting. as much a crude education on whaling as it is a compelling narrative of madness. but Melville's passion for the whole mish mash saves it. a deeply weird and personal book that I had a hard time putting down especially in the final 3 chapters as they chased the titular whale. sometimes I read a "classic" and don't really get what all the fuss was about but w/ Moby Dick I get it and am kind of amazed something this funny, tricky, graphic, and epic has somehow landed in the canon.
Lots of filler but I was absorbed the whole time. I learned tons about whales if nothing else!
I feel good that I finished this 'whale' of a book, but I can't say I felt great during the reading of it. I respected its wild obsessive insanity; its shifting POVs; its tremendous accounting of details; it's magnificent use of semicolons. I liked that Ishmael was like, no dudes, whales are definitely fish not mammals. But good lord, I do not (usually/mostly) care about masculine stories, nor hunting, even if I can respect them, even if in reading them I learn/gain something, and I definitely learned/gained things from this novel, from its treatise on capitalism; from looking at it as an environmental/climate change text; from thinking about the capaciousness of the novel's form. But I will never read this damn book again.
"Is Moby Dick a metaphor for the struggle of trying to read Moby Dick?" -Stephen Colbert
This is easily the most frequently boring book I've ever read that is this good.
I mean, I now understand more of cetology than I did before, including what it is -- and can tell you, hoo boy, why a sperm whale is TOTALLY not a right whale.
But not all readers are made of such stern stuff as me. To those who struggle, I say:
Do not surrender!
Skip the chapter entirely about the finer points of whale tails!
There's one about whether whales are stupid or not; skip it!
And the ones about bad whale paintings, okay whale paintings, and the pictures of whales that are on teeth and mountains DON'T EVEN TRY, it's okay!
They're not the heart of the story, the reason for attempting to scale this peak! You'll see! It's a masterpiece.
I mean, I now understand more of cetology than I did before, including what it is -- and can tell you, hoo boy, why a sperm whale is TOTALLY not a right whale.
But not all readers are made of such stern stuff as me. To those who struggle, I say:
Do not surrender!
Skip the chapter entirely about the finer points of whale tails!
There's one about whether whales are stupid or not; skip it!
And the ones about bad whale paintings, okay whale paintings, and the pictures of whales that are on teeth and mountains DON'T EVEN TRY, it's okay!
They're not the heart of the story, the reason for attempting to scale this peak! You'll see! It's a masterpiece.
Every paragraph in this novel is pure poetry. Unfortunately most of the story that accompanies that poetry is mind numbingly, eye blearingly boring. This book is definitely for someone, but I fear that someone died of old age fifty years ago.
Home
Moby Dick is one of the pinnacles of English literature. Which is to say, steep, inhospitable and littered with pitfalls for the unwary reader.
The actual plot of the novel, Captain Ahab’s obsession with hunting down the eponymous white whale, occupies only a fraction of the novel’s length. The rest of the book is dedicated to diversions and digressions on every aspect of whales and whaling life. It’s a dense, complicated book, employing a variety of styles from Old Testament damnation to sailor’s yarn to scientific journal, the narrative taking on the obsessive mania of Ahab in its need to give the very last word on whaling.
It’s tough going and a lot to take in, you will glaze over in places, but if you can last the course then you should find a tour de force in storytelling. It’s not a book to read idly on holiday. It is a fine instructional manual for the budding writer. Melville shows great mastery of a number of styles and there’s a lot to be learned on how a writer can bend the medium to tell his story rather than wedging the story into the confines of the medium. Indeed, many of the techniques Melville pioneered in Moby Dick weren’t rediscovered until the great modernist writers of the early twentieth century.
It truly is one of the most remarkable performances that English literature has yet produced. Not one for the casual reader, but worthy of an obsession. Ahab would understand.
Moby Dick is one of the pinnacles of English literature. Which is to say, steep, inhospitable and littered with pitfalls for the unwary reader.
The actual plot of the novel, Captain Ahab’s obsession with hunting down the eponymous white whale, occupies only a fraction of the novel’s length. The rest of the book is dedicated to diversions and digressions on every aspect of whales and whaling life. It’s a dense, complicated book, employing a variety of styles from Old Testament damnation to sailor’s yarn to scientific journal, the narrative taking on the obsessive mania of Ahab in its need to give the very last word on whaling.
It’s tough going and a lot to take in, you will glaze over in places, but if you can last the course then you should find a tour de force in storytelling. It’s not a book to read idly on holiday. It is a fine instructional manual for the budding writer. Melville shows great mastery of a number of styles and there’s a lot to be learned on how a writer can bend the medium to tell his story rather than wedging the story into the confines of the medium. Indeed, many of the techniques Melville pioneered in Moby Dick weren’t rediscovered until the great modernist writers of the early twentieth century.
It truly is one of the most remarkable performances that English literature has yet produced. Not one for the casual reader, but worthy of an obsession. Ahab would understand.
Home
Moby Dick is one of the pinnacles of English literature. Which is to say, steep, inhospitable and littered with pitfalls for the unwary reader.
The actual plot of the novel, Captain Ahab’s obsession with hunting down the eponymous white whale, occupies only a fraction of the novel’s length. The rest of the book is dedicated to diversions and digressions on every aspect of whales and whaling life. It’s a dense, complicated book, employing a variety of styles from Old Testament damnation to sailor’s yarn to scientific journal, the narrative taking on the obsessive mania of Ahab in its need to give the very last word on whaling.
It’s tough going and a lot to take in, you will glaze over in places, but if you can last the course then you should find a tour de force in storytelling. It’s not a book to read idly on holiday. It is a fine instructional manual for the budding writer. Melville shows great mastery of a number of styles and there’s a lot to be learned on how a writer can bend the medium to tell his story rather than wedging the story into the confines of the medium. Indeed, many of the techniques Melville pioneered in Moby Dick weren’t rediscovered until the great modernist writers of the early twentieth century.
It truly is one of the most remarkable performances that English literature has yet produced. Not one for the casual reader, but worthy of an obsession. Ahab would understand.
Moby Dick is one of the pinnacles of English literature. Which is to say, steep, inhospitable and littered with pitfalls for the unwary reader.
The actual plot of the novel, Captain Ahab’s obsession with hunting down the eponymous white whale, occupies only a fraction of the novel’s length. The rest of the book is dedicated to diversions and digressions on every aspect of whales and whaling life. It’s a dense, complicated book, employing a variety of styles from Old Testament damnation to sailor’s yarn to scientific journal, the narrative taking on the obsessive mania of Ahab in its need to give the very last word on whaling.
It’s tough going and a lot to take in, you will glaze over in places, but if you can last the course then you should find a tour de force in storytelling. It’s not a book to read idly on holiday. It is a fine instructional manual for the budding writer. Melville shows great mastery of a number of styles and there’s a lot to be learned on how a writer can bend the medium to tell his story rather than wedging the story into the confines of the medium. Indeed, many of the techniques Melville pioneered in Moby Dick weren’t rediscovered until the great modernist writers of the early twentieth century.
It truly is one of the most remarkable performances that English literature has yet produced. Not one for the casual reader, but worthy of an obsession. Ahab would understand.
adventurous
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes