5 stars for Moby Dick. It makes me feel like an idiot to give 5 stars to Moby Dick. It should make you feel like an idiot, too. Why do we live in such idiotic times? Why must I care obsessively about our idiotic times? Why does it feel like the times we live in bit off my right leg? Why must I drag all my family and all my friends and all my partners down into the depths of this hell I feel about the times we live in? I will seek out the truth of all this, with passion, impossible to sidetrack, determined to seek out the whiteness of these times, the blank meaningless emptiness of these times.

Everyone, yes, everyone should read Moby Dick at least once every 10 years. Just to remind ourselves of what is and what is not possible.

This is probably my favorite novel.

I enjoyed the book and especially enjoyed the chapter on Cetology as well as the concepts of class and social status, and the obsessive pursuit of Moby Dick by Captain Ahab.

I am currently reading this edition of Moby Dick. This is my fourth time reading it.

Amazing collection of three of Melville's greatest novels. A must for any Melville fan.

About a thid of the way through. Good but a little slow. I found an interesting Ishmael reference, which of course is how Moby-Dick begins, so that was kind of cool.

I put this on hold while I read "Suite Francaise", much more appealing to me right now....

Pros:

Cons:
* The greatest American novel” – NOT!

Other:
* Here is a link to the Spark Notes – you’re going to need them: www.sparknotes.com/lit/mobydick/

I love this book.

Moby Dick Moby-Dick, or the Whale) is a novel of epic proportions with characteristics of Greek and Elizabethan stage tragedies.

Moby-Dick is a book you need to read twice, because the first time you read it it’s entirely not what you expect. The second time around gives you a chance to know what’s coming-—yes, there will be an entire chapter about the color white—-and even then, the novel is just full of so many bizarre and beautiful images and amazing turns-of-language it can still suckerpunch you. (I mean, there’s a scene where Ahab stands in the middle of a typhoon waving a flaming harpoon!)

This Library of America volume puts Moby-Dick side by side with the lesser known Redburn and White-Jacket. These are both less story driven and more fictionalized documentary. Redburn, ostensibly about a young sailor’s first voyage, is really a series of chapters describing life as a sailor. What plot there is is fairly slight. White-Jacket is similar, only this time it is about life in the U.S. Navy aboard a Man-of-War. (These plot-free novels make all the plot-free descriptive chapters of Moby-Dick understandable in context. It's what 19th century readers expected when they picked up a book by Mr. Melville.) Both of these novels have their standout moments. Redburn has a chilling chapter where the young narrator on a layover in Liverpool watches a mother and her children starve to death over the course of several days. And White-Jacket has a chapter about an on-board amputation that is so gory, absurd, and funny it could just as well have appeared in Catch-22.

Moby-Dick of course is a giant and beautiful mess. It’s a slaughtered-whale of a novel, to speak metaphorically. (Which is easy to do after immersing yourself in 600 pages of Melville’s non-stop metaphorizing.) It’s no refined classic. It’s unkempt, preposterous, beautiful and totally American.

I have read Moby-Dick three times (and own seven copies, I think), Redburn and White-Jacket each once. I would recommend them all. Melville is an all-time favorite of mine.