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Moby Dick or the Whale

By Herman Melville

(431)

| School & Library Binding | 9780785788867

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12 Reviews

1 person find this helpful

And on the third day...

This is a huge barrel of whaling lore, brimful and stoppered with every possible scrap of information about 19th century whaling ships, about the men who sailed them, the tools they used and the skills needed for the nearly impossible task of hunting the great sperm whale for his precious oil. But ... (continue)

This is a huge barrel of whaling lore, brimful and stoppered with every possible scrap of information about 19th century whaling ships, about the men who sailed them, the tools they used and the skills needed for the nearly impossible task of hunting the great sperm whale for his precious oil. But underneath all that blubber beats the comparatively small but throbbing heart of a great adventure story, peopled with entertaining characters straight out of Shakespeare and pervaded with biblical foreshadowings of doom.
And I got to the last page on Easter Sunday

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Top of the pile said on Apr 27, 2011 about the Mass Market Paperback edition | 1 feedback

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"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it re ... (continue)

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principal to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get sea as soon as I can. This is my substitue for pistol and ball."
mi succede di provare certe sensazioni ultimamente! non sarebbe male prendere il mare, almeno metaforicamente parlando!

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Pal Sil3 said on Feb 9, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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Moby-Dick

Very long story. Yet very boring.

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Rolldisc said on Dec 23, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

It takes a scholar not to realise (or to ignore) that 4/5 of Melville's novel is a satire about scholars and not a celebration of this noble wellfare system.
Idolater and fanatic, Ishmael leads us through chapter after chapter of unrestrained ranting, distorted facts, lies, deliberatly ignoring impo ... (continue)

It takes a scholar not to realise (or to ignore) that 4/5 of Melville's novel is a satire about scholars and not a celebration of this noble wellfare system.
Idolater and fanatic, Ishmael leads us through chapter after chapter of unrestrained ranting, distorted facts, lies, deliberatly ignoring important aspects while talking about things completely unrelated to his subject and generally making an ass of himself. The chapter debating the nature of the substance coming out of the whales spout, where he talks about all great individuals giving off steam, concluding by observing that whenever he ponders a subject he can see a vapour rising from his head in the mirror is hilarious.
Sadly these laugh out loud moments are rare and even as a satire, reading page after page of scholary gibberisch gets increasingly tedious as you progress through the novel, and by the time you reach the end of the book, you ask yourself why you bothered.
so if you want the drama of Moby Dick, do yourself a favour: watch an adaptation, it'll be better balanced, no-nonsense and in the end you wont feel like someone stole several hours of your life.

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Gloria Gainer, Duke of Argyle said on Apr 7, 2012 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

My traveling book

Usually I'm very careful in handling books, and few of the ones I have show scratches or any sign of wear. Moby Dick is the book I always take with me when I travel, and it's in a pretty bad shape due to the multiple reading and the adventurous journeys it shared with me. I love to read it in differ ... (continue)

Usually I'm very careful in handling books, and few of the ones I have show scratches or any sign of wear. Moby Dick is the book I always take with me when I travel, and it's in a pretty bad shape due to the multiple reading and the adventurous journeys it shared with me. I love to read it in different parts of the world and see what different flavor it will have. Reading it in Japan was different from reading it in Russia or in England. And I've honestly lost count of how many times I read this book, but every time it has something new about it, that I just can't stop reading and reading again.

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Tazio Bettin said on Mar 19, 2012 about the Mass Market Paperback edition | Add your feedback

De toutes les matières, c'est la ouate que je préfère!

Oh my Holy Goodness Gracious! When has it last occurred to me to need five months! - not three, not four: five! - to read a book? It almost felt like I was traveling myself on the Pequod along with Ishmael, Queequeg, Ahab and the rest of the crew: a harsh, long protracted journey by the slow rhythm ... (continue)

Oh my Holy Goodness Gracious! When has it last occurred to me to need five months! - not three, not four: five! - to read a book? It almost felt like I was traveling myself on the Pequod along with Ishmael, Queequeg, Ahab and the rest of the crew: a harsh, long protracted journey by the slow rhythm of a Nineteenth Century sailboat. And as difficult and lengthy and tortuous as it may have been, I enjoyed it. How's that possible? Well, just as some people enjoy to spend a night in a cold, humid tent among mosquitoes and other bugs yet without a bed and a bathroom while they could just as well spend that night in a comfortable hotel room; just as those people did I enjoy a rustic, comfortless journey reading through the "pagewaves" of this lofty, glorious "bookocean". Having understood by far not all of it's 1851-old, literary, experimental and oftentimes technical language (I should however add that I am not a native English speaker), and this having contributed to understand only fragments of it's convoluted complexity (which, of course, is not merely due to the language, but knowing English well does help), I shall nevertheless always carry with me a cherished memory of the hard reading work done between June 22nd and November 22nd 2011 (I told you it was exactly five months. And I didn't even cheat: it happened completely by chance. Bringing back the volume to the library - being aware i had renewed the loan an almost embarrassing amount of times -, I asked the librarian to remind me when I had first taken it, and she told me: 22nd of June. Maybe it's a sign of something rich and strange...).
But from now on, I shall never forget that no matter how many lungs a fish has, no matter how boiling hot his blood: arguing that because of such trivialities he cannot be a fish is simply humbug, or at least an insufficient reason. I shall never forget that no matter how many whales men will hunt, the whale is immortal in his species, however perishable in his individuality. There are simply too many sperm whales in the seas to be all killed by our greedy species. I shall never forget that if you take high abstracted man alone, he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they seem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary. I shall never forget the heart and will I got, reading that not seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune's favorites sail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the rushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out.
And as much as these few examples may give the impression I'm making fun of "Moby Dick or The Whale" (true blasphemy!), it is not the case, let me state this very clearly. Especially, in this contemporary fast pacing world of ours, we all too often rely on some so-called scientific truths, forgetting that any human truth is just one definition of an immanent objective truth. I constantly forget to remind this to myself. Perhaps, carrying this great novel of Captain Ahab chasing the giant White Whale across the world will help me keeping that in mind more often. I wish you a trying yet most worthwhile reading.

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Alessandro Persia said on Nov 25, 2011 about the Audio Cassette edition | Add your feedback