Moby Dick

My Review

I nearly gave up on this book when I was 70% through. It took me two full months to read and was a dull, drab, joyless, slumber inducing diatribe against my normally curious state of being. I learned more about a whale's anatomy than I every truly wanted. I think even a cetologist would have been a little bored.

Now, I say this because at 70% I stopped reading and visited the Good Reads website so I could read some reviews and better understand why any sane person would complete the book. I quickly found some hilarious comments:

"Ah, my first DBR. And possibly my last, as this could be a complete shit show. Approaching a review of Moby-Dick in a state of sobriety just wasn’t cutting it, though. So let’s raise our glasses to Option B, yeah?" - 5 stars

"I fucking love this book. It took me eight hundred years to read it, but it was so, so worth it." - 5 stars

"I tried." - 2 stars

"There once was a grouchy alpha whale named Moby Dick who -- rather than being agreeably shorn of his blubber and having lumpy sperm scooped out of his cranium like cottage cheese -- chose life. Unlike so many shiftless, layabout sea mammals of his generation, Moby Dick did not go gentle into that good night. This whale, in short, was not a back-of-the-bus rider. He assailed a shallow, consumerist society, which objectified him only as lamp oil or corset ribbing, with the persuasive argument of his thrashing tail, gaping maw, and herculean bulk." - 5 stars

I can't find the review that convinced me to finish it but it basically said something along the lines of this: "look, this book can insanely dull with all the explanations of whale anatomy, whale ships, and whaling personnel and ranks. But you have to slow down and take your time to truly enjoy the constant humor and wit of Melville."

So, I slowed down, whereas directly prior I had started speed reading pages in hopes to finish quickly and say I completed the book. I'm glad I slowed down because it did make me think about the words and complex language. I was able to enjoy it much more immensely.

"Immensely".... probably the wrong word choice. I didn't enjoy it immensely, just much more immensely than before, which was quite a bit more. But near the end, the encyclopedic dissertations had mostly stopped and, instead, moved into multipage soliloquies by Captain Ahab and others.

I will not read this book again. I'm somewhat happy I read it, for the sake of saying I've read the great classic, Moby Dick. Other than that, it was ok. Perhaps, if I was locked in a dungeon and the only thing I had to read was Moby Dick, I would re-read it, take my time, and break down every sentence into a primal level of understanding. I just hope I'd have a dictionary near me because there were a lot of new words that my Kindle so willingly provided definitions.

New or Somewhat Unfamiliar Words

extant
wight
arrantest
topers
obstreperously.
caper
toilette
verdure
larboard—larboard
vitiated,
verdure.
sanguinary
sagacious
impertinent
palavering
succor
patent
intrepid
ignominious
camphorated
wrought
cetology.
gregarious.
abstemious,
anon,
ubiquitous;
evinced
somnambulistic
miasmas,
sordidness.
tyro
perfidious
foibles
portents,
unctuous
roods
scaramouch
laudanum.
quoins
paregoric
nosegay
ambergris.
wight
recondite
astern.
prow
ablutions;
expatiate.
hawsers
monomaniac
primogenitures
stolidity
sinecures
somnambulisms,
importunity
verdure.
imprecate
pall.
portent;
celerity
succor
poltroon.

Quotes

"they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed."

"To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this world must start to their feet from out of
idleness, and not from out of toil."

"A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul."

"For, say they, when cruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the world, get a good dinner
out of it, at least. And this empties the decanter."

"oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than
the bottom of the woe is deep."

“There she blows!—there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!”