Reading 'Moby Dick'

[Mutt]

I put off reading this book my entire life, acclaimed to be of the greatest novels ever written. The book was a total bomb when it was published in the latter 19th century. The author lived out his life as a failure working as a customs inspector.

It's awful, each page is torture. I need to use a dictionary or Google minimum 5 times per page. I will finish all 600 horrid pages because I'm not a quitter.

There's some masterful writing in it but as a whole, agony.

[Nydahl]

sounds like fun
Read it ages ago in Czech translation - wasn't impressed much but still its classic.
I am now deep in Jo Nesbo - he is very good really

[rogueteens]

Moby Dick is the only book I've ever given up on, I used to buy quite a few classics when I commuted to work as they did them for a quid each, but I agree, every page is sheer torture. I think I only managed about 50 or so pages.

[John-ACWM]

I guess I'll try it just to see how horrible is.. really.

[Lichen]

I've felt same way about "Hammer of God" by Arthur C. Clarke.

[MiamiBoyz]

The Bible is much worse. Ridiculous story and totally believable characters.

[kane]

I have never been able to talk myself into reading it. . . it just seems like a dry, painful journey.

[MediaGuy]

Wait 'til you hit that full-chapter about whale penis...

:D

[Major (Tom)]

Originally Posted by Mutt

I put off reading this book my entire life, acclaimed to be of the greatest novels ever written. The book was a total bomb when it was published in the latter 19th century. The author lived out his life as a failure working as a customs inspector.

It's awful, each page is torture. I need to use a dictionary or Google minimum 5 times per page. I will finish all 600 horrid pages because I'm not a quitter.

There's some masterful writing in it but as a whole, agony.

The trick is is to skip the entire several chapters on where he describes the breeds of whales etc. well, at least that's what I was taught when reading it.
Ds

[Mutt]

It could have been written as the Jaws of the 19th century. Strangest book I may have read - chapters where the entire storyline stops so the author can tell you everything there was known about each species of whale and whaling ships to an obsessed degree of minutiae, a bizarre chapter that is out of a Shakespeare play. Obvious that the author Melville was a Shakespeare devotee. He takes a page to say what could be said in a few sentences. His sentences are long, complicated and awkward.

Quiet Sunday, I've plodded through another 100 pages, feel like a prisoner crawling through a tunnel where freedom is the last word on the last page.

[druid66]

i'm reading books my whole life, started in 1st basic school class with julius verne journey to the centre of earth.

biggest agony for me was frankenstein written by a girl, mary wollstonecraft shelley, that day i;ve decided to never again read books written by girls/women (with few exceptions).

why you ask?

frankenstein: "this poor girl ah oh she is so poor i know shes not guilty but ah oh i can't help her because ah oooh i'm soo afraid to reveal aaahh ohh truth.."

ok, it was not accurate as you may guessed but you get the point :D

[MediaGuy]

Originally Posted by druid66

biggest agony for me was frankenstein written by a girl, mary wollstonecraft shelley, that day i;ve decided to never again read books written by girls/women (with few exceptions).

why you ask?

frankenstein: "this poor girl ah oh she is so poor i know shes not guilty but ah oh i can't help her because ah oooh i'm soo afraid to reveal aaahh ohh truth.."

ok, it was not accurate as you may guessed but you get the point :D

Frankenstein can be understandably obtuse to modern audiences, written as it was in the 19th century as basically a gothic romance and in the "diary format" popular at the time, if I remember it. I liked it. I also loved Dracula, another popular novel written in the same style in the late 1800s.

But you're losing out on a lot of great writing if you're going to cut out the chicks in one fell swoop.

Just off the top of my head, here's some great (modern) books written by humans with vaginas, which shouldn't make a bloody difference (I'll leave out 19th century authors though I'm not sure about all these writers):

The Eight - Katherine Neville

Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice

Cry to Heaven - Anne Rice (actually, anything Rice does is worth reading, althugh some stuff is a little too romance-novel style...)

The Awakening - Kate Chopin (lots of great short stories too)

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson (also wrote The Lottery and other great short stories)

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee (everyone thinks this is a guy, but nope she's a female)

The Tomorrow-Tamer - Margaret Laurence

Gone with the Wind - I don't remember her name but she was a she

Beloved - Toni Morrison

The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Leguin

A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'engle


How can you deprive yourself??

:D

[candyflip]

I remember reading and discussing this in class. 7th Grade. Hated every page.

[druid66]

Originally Posted by MediaGuy

Frankenstein can be understandably obtuse to modern audiences, written as it was in the 19th century as basically a gothic romance and in the "diary format" popular at the time, if I remember it. I liked it. I also loved Dracula, another popular novel written in the same style in the late 1800s.

But you're losing out on a lot of great writing if you're going to cut out the chicks in one fell swoop.

Just off the top of my head, here's some great (modern) books written by humans with vaginas, which shouldn't make a bloody difference (I'll leave out 19th century authors though I'm not sure about all these writers):

The Eight - Katherine Neville

Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice

Cry to Heaven - Anne Rice (actually, anything Rice does is worth reading, althugh some stuff is a little too romance-novel style...)

The Awakening - Kate Chopin (lots of great short stories too)

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson (also wrote The Lottery and other great short stories)

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee (everyone thinks this is a guy, but nope she's a female)

The Tomorrow-Tamer - Margaret Laurence

Gone with the Wind - I don't remember her name but she was a she

Beloved - Toni Morrison

The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Leguin

A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'engle


How can you deprive yourself??

:D

like i said theres exceptions.

but not anne rice. shes very very bad. every man in her book when is drinking starting to kiss another mans, all the time (read vampire lestat and few other). another example of moronic clueless writings of her was a man chasing by wolfpack during blizzard, the man (on the horse) turned back, draw his faithful black powder rifle and shoot one of the wolves, then he falls, rolled, draws another faithful BLACK POWDER rifle and shoot another wolf.. after that i've throw with my faithful arm vampire lestat against the wall in the train room (i was in trave then) and never again tried to read anne rice again.

guess you know (everyone know excepr anne r.) how black powder rifle works... small puff and bye bye to shooting.

ed.: and i agree with you with this diary stylish 18th century writing style, i understand it must be done this way, it's just was unbeareable for me at the time i was reading it, many years ago ;)

[MediaGuy]

Originally Posted by druid66

like i said theres exceptions.

but not anne rice. shes very very bad. every man in her book when is drinking starting to kiss another mans, all the time (read vampire lestat and few other). another example of moronic clueless writings of her was a man chasing by wolfpack during blizzard, the man (on the horse) turned back, draw his faithful black powder rifle and shoot one of the wolves, then he falls, rolled, draws another faithful BLACK POWDER rifle and shoot another wolf.. after that i've throw with my faithful arm vampire lestat against the wall in the train room (i was in trave then) and never again tried to read anne rice again.

guess you know (everyone know excepr anne r.) how black powder rifle works... small puff and bye bye to shooting.

ed.: and i agree with you with this diary stylish 18th century writing style, i understand it must be done this way, it's just was unbeareable for me at the time i was reading it, many years ago ;)

That's why I mentioned Anne Rice's Romantic tendencies, though to me her first three Lestat/vampire novels and Cry to Heaven were amazing (if you can overcome any homophobic tendencies of yours...). But her Mummy and other novels really have that bodice-ripper thing going, which is fine if you can accept it as a convention... bugged me with the mummy books, but the witch novels whatever they were called were also quite good.

As to the old musket wolf-killing scenes... they convinced me at the time, especially if he (Lestat) had more than one rifle. It wouldn't spoil the whole novel for me...

Have you read Dracula? It's an excellent example of that diary/journal form of writing, and quite an excellent feminist tract as well, if you can read between those lines...

:D

[cybermike]

Speaking of old books never read.. I downloaded 1984 audio book and it was riveting .. maybe listening to old books on audio is the better choice ..

[kane]

Originally Posted by MediaGuy

That's why I mentioned Anne Rice's Romantic tendencies, though to me her first three Lestat/vampire novels and Cry to Heaven were amazing (if you can overcome any homophobic tendencies of yours...). But her Mummy and other novels really have that bodice-ripper thing going, which is fine if you can accept it as a convention... bugged me with the mummy books, but the witch novels whatever they were called were also quite good.

As to the old musket wolf-killing scenes... they convinced me at the time, especially if he (Lestat) had more than one rifle. It wouldn't spoil the whole novel for me...

Have you read Dracula? It's an excellent example of that diary/journal form of writing, and quite an excellent feminist tract as well, if you can read between those lines...

:D

Dracula is great. I loved it. Anne Rice I struggle with though. I personally found Interview with the Vampire terribly boring. I really struggled to get through it (although I did enjoy the movie). However, I did listen to an audio book of Servant of the Bones while on a road trip and enjoyed it.

When I first read Interview it was the early 90's and I was in my early 20's so maybe now I would appreciate it more.

[ohjulien]

What the hell. . .anyone remember porn?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nGZxzxaYb8I

[mikesouth]

You think Moby Dick is tough try "Gravity's Rainbow" I made it through 100 pages and gave up

Moby Dick Is elementary School Reader by comparison..it at least made sense

[MediaGuy]

Originally Posted by kane

Dracula is great. I loved it. Anne Rice I struggle with though. I personally found Interview with the Vampire terribly boring. I really struggled to get through it (although I did enjoy the movie). However, I did listen to an audio book of Servant of the Bones while on a road trip and enjoyed it.

When I first read Interview it was the early 90's and I was in my early 20's so maybe now I would appreciate it more.

The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned are evolutions of the long-narrative form, and really great - especially the second one (vampire Lestat). The third is classic pop novel format, but with all of Anne Rice's spicy little additions...

Dracula is just amazing. I wish Coppola hadn't "christianized" his adaptation, because otherwise it's the most faithful. What I liked about the novel was that whenever the guys kept the gals from knowing about whatever was happening, things went bad - had the ladies been informed, no bad shit would have happened. A crude but basically accurate recap of the book. I've read it twice and come to appreciate it more as time goes on...

It's interesting that it was written in the decade following the Jack the Ripper murders, though I don't know if these inspired Stoker in any way...

:D

[bronco67]

So you're complaining it's torture because you have to look up words from the text?

[kane]

Originally Posted by MediaGuy

The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned are evolutions of the long-narrative form, and really great - especially the second one (vampire Lestat). The third is classic pop novel format, but with all of Anne Rice's spicy little additions...

Dracula is just amazing. I wish Coppola hadn't "christianized" his adaptation, because otherwise it's the most faithful. What I liked about the novel was that whenever the guys kept the gals from knowing about whatever was happening, things went bad - had the ladies been informed, no bad shit would have happened. A crude but basically accurate recap of the book. I've read it twice and come to appreciate it more as time goes on...

It's interesting that it was written in the decade following the Jack the Ripper murders, though I don't know if these inspired Stoker in any way...

:D

In 1997 a friend of mine and I produced an audio book version of the book for the 100th anniversary of its publication. Since it is written as a collection of diary entries and letters we got actors to play all of the parts and then edited it together so you were told the story from all of the different perspectives. It was a fun project.

Sadly, the friend and I had a falling out a few years later so I no longer have access to it.

[MediaGuy]

Originally Posted by kane

In 1997 a friend of mine and I produced an audio book version of the book for the 100th anniversary of its publication. Since it is written as a collection of diary entries and letters we got actors to play all of the parts and then edited it together so you were told the story from all of the different perspectives. It was a fun project.

Sadly, the friend and I had a falling out a few years later so I no longer have access to it.

That really sucks. It would be a very cool project. Though, to be honest, not my kind of thing. In the time it takes me to watch a video or listen to an audio file, I can read through ten versions of the same thing in print. So I have to really be in my sleepy-time mode to start listening or watching anything I can read....

My bad :P ?

:D

[kane]

Originally Posted by MediaGuy

That really sucks. It would be a very cool project. Though, to be honest, not my kind of thing. In the time it takes me to watch a video or listen to an audio file, I can read through ten versions of the same thing in print. So I have to really be in my sleepy-time mode to start listening or watching anything I can read....

My bad :P ?

:D

Normally I am the same way. I can read it a lot faster than listening to it being read. However, for a road trip, commuting, or a while back when I was working at this crappy repetitive job, it is fun to listen to that kind of stuff to keep your brain from going crazy.

We had actually thought about doing a live performance of it, but then realized it would be like 10 hours long.

[druid66]

guess i need 2nd approach to few old books since when i was reading it or trying to read i was in my early '20 to and not very patient :D

never listen to audiobook, kinda repulse me i would feel handicaped if i did it instead of reading actual book.

[cam_girls]

They say one day Moby The Great White Label will rule the seas!









The video is pretty awesome though! Just to find out what it's about...

[CurrentlySober]

i kunt a4d a dick...

[EddyTheDog]

The Whale did it...

[_Richard_]

that's a good book.. you should read War and Peace as well