50 Book Challenge - Book 14
Book 14: Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville
I read Moby-Dick, not because it is a Great Book or something like that, but because I didn’t want to feel dumber than a heavy metal band. That’s right. Last year, a group named Mastodon put out Leviathan, an album loosely based on Moby-Dick. It’s actually really good, if you’re into metal-type music.
But anyways, I read Moby-Dick, and man, that is a long book. Melville must have done a ton of research for it; I learned more about whales and whaling than I ever cared to know. Told by a long-winded, digressive, and oddly well-read whaleman, the story jumps from narrative, to description of the whale and the business of whaling, to scientific or literary analyses, and back again. I got bored occasionally, and it was hard to keep going from time to time. So I’m glad I read it, I guess, but I don’t think I’ll be picking it up again in the near future.
On the plus side, I now recognize the quote on Class Maledictorian, and I did enjoy the moral I took from the story: Sometimes, just let it go, man.
April 22nd, 2005 at 4:57 pm
Urgh. I disliked Moby Dick intensely. My memory of it is something like this: a million years on the boat. Whale! Whale! A million years on the boat. Whale! Shipwreck!
Gah.
April 22nd, 2005 at 6:54 pm
Yeah, that sounds about right. The actual plot could have fit in 100 pages or so, and the extra stuff (I want to say “filler”, but that doesn’t sound right for a 600-some page book) wasn’t interesting enough to be worthwhile.
It was a struggle to finish, that’s for sure.