Ok, I’m just going to say this now and get it over with:
I do not like Moby Dick. I can’t get through it. I don’t care about Captain Ahab’s obsession, and I don’t care if he ever gets that blasted whale. So you can avast all you want, but I just won’t ever read it. So there 
::taking a deep breath::
Wow, you really do feel so much better when you get such things off your chest 
Now Jane Austen I can do. I could read her all day. Gotta love English gossip! 
I’m about half way through it. I read it before in 4th grade but as I read this again I believe I may have read a “kid’s” version because I don’t recall the monotonous parts.
I stopped to read an Anthony Burgess novel and now I’m finishing Cell.
Then it’s back to MD.
I would select Two Years Before the Mast over Moby’s Richard for its readability.
djm
Hey now Izz,
I did mention that Moby Dick is a bit tedious in places and it can be very hard to get through the tedious stuff but once you get into it there is a wealth of writing and information about Whale hunting, a dying trade.
The language is a long way away from Austen, The Sisters Bronte and those most English of writers.
There is no pride, and very little prejudice, out hunting the whale.
Moby is one of my favourite books, just the intensity alone makes it worthwhile and worth reading.
If you want Obsession, try “Lolita”..an absolute masterclass in beginning to understand that condition and Prose that blows Melville out of the water.
I’ve recently finished my sixth or seventh reading of it over the years, and it just gets better every time.
The sheer elegance and style of the writing is beyond belief. The most delicate and tender writing I have ever come across..
Slan,
D. 
I agree. When you consider Nabokov’s skill at colloquial American English, or English at all for that matter (remembering that it was certainly not his first language), you have to be impressed. In all of Lolita, I detected only one or two very subtle, small giveaways that the author might not be a born Anglophone. That’s pretty good.
Then there’s the narrative itself. Its skillful yet natural imagery aside (hard enough to do for the native English speaker), the subject was initially shocking, and yet just kept to the razor’s edge of Platonic. And as Dubh says, it was most tenderly written. I actually had to put the book down a couple of times early on and catch my breath. It’s the rare book that’ll do that to me.
Nabokov’s pretty good. I still say Tennessee Williams is one of a very few people who never wrote a word that was less than perfect. He’s in my top three, for sure.
But, as for must-read books, I’d definitely have to go with The Neverending Story. But then, I’m a sucker for children’s lit. I love The Phantom Tollbooth and anything Lewis Carroll and all that.
What was this thread about, again?
It’s kinda funny that this book is classified as children’s lit, since it’s way over the heads of many adults I know. Perhaps it takes a child-like imagination to really get it.
But yes, I agree that it’s a great piece of literature. The movie didn’t even come close to doing it justice.
No obvious hijacks, so apparently it’s just a victim of thread drift. I think it had something to do with the first Home Depot on Long Island, or something like that.
Great literature (I fixed the title).
Carry on.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Alright…I actually own a copy, so when I find it (I believe that my eldest son may have it stashed somewhere), I’ll make another attempt. But only because you said I should, Dubh.
You are so accommodating, Jerry! 
I still haven’t finished Atlas Shrugged, which I started in 1954.
I must say that I found thecetology sections to be particularly tedious.
Oh, and Jerry, was it Colonel William “Tangier” Smith that the question was asking about?
Breathtaking for sure.
In the edition I have, Nab makes a comment in the appendix that sez having got the first print back from the publisher and reading through it, he regretted not writing it in his native language as he found English to be very limiting.
That blew me away altogether.
If the prose of Lolita is limited then what would it be like in his own language.
I for one, am glad that he did it in English because I’m too old and feeble to be learning Russian.
While I’m on the subject of great writing, a little hobby of mine is to open a book by F.Scott Fitzgerald and pick a paragraph at random.
Now there’s a guy who could put a sentence or two together..and him falling over drunk at the time. Fitz was never one to use a word that the average reader would need to look up in a dictionary but nobody, outside of the great Poets, could use ordinary words in such an extraordinary way.
I’ll shut up now..
Slan,
D.
On the subject of Fitzgerald-
one of my favorite reads is “Zelda” by Nancy Milford(I think)
I find the whole Jazz Age fascinating, and they both are the ultimate of the era.
I read the Classics Illustrated version of Kipling’s The Jungle Book. I liked the pictures. That part where the old snake had him a palace that was fun stuff. I like great litature.
Must have been.
A quick Google reveals that your Colonel had a wife named Martha and a whaling business (among a few other things). I found no mention of tanning salons, BTW, although I believe there actually are quite a few of them on Long Island. Based on what I was able to read quickly, it does appear that Colonel Smith was well diversified in his business activities, so I wouldn’t rule it out.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Well, I think Hemingway has Fitzgerald beat in the department, but I agree that Fitzgerald is a very talented writer. Hemingway, though, can make you cry or laugh or scream or squirm with only three-letter words.
I couldn’t make it through Moby Dick in high school and I always felt guilty about it since I more or less pretended I had read the whole thing when I wrote my paper on it—I swear it was the only book I ever did that on. Many years later I decided to try it again. I got out my Bible and my dictionary and I looked up every single darn word and name that I didn’t know. I made tons of notes in the margins. It was work but enjoyable and I ended up loving that book. Even the chapter describing the whales, which I had absolutely hated in high school, was fascinating. There are all sorts of puzzles and meanings with the words. If you look up every word that is even slightly puzzling, there won’t be any tedious parts----you will be amazed at how every word is chosen for a special reason and at how Melville creates this incredibly complex web or interlockingness. Just read a bit every day when you have some quiet time. I guess I’d better try to find my copy and read it again. There are just so many books to read!
That’s like me. When I was a child I hated cranberry sauce. Now I like it. It’s like jam.