A long time ago I slogged through a complete edition of Moby Dick and found it really difficult to read. There are many good passages but they are hidden between endless pages about things that don’t move the plot forward and are only interesting from a sort of historian’s perspective, e.g. treatises about the understanding of whale biology at the time.

I couldn’t get through the book, either, the first couple of times I tried to read it. But on my third attempt I came to think that the obsession with whales itself, both Ahab’s and the author’s, was maybe more important than the plot. In any case, it’s a strange, fascinating book.