Moby Dick by Herman Melville, ⭐⭐⭐

 Read in July 2020

Well, at least I can say I've read this classic. It is far too long with way too much detail. Putting my English Literature student hat on, I can appreciate it as an important work full of symbolism, allegory and other literary devices. But, personally, even though I did find some unintentional innuendo amusing, I feel that overall this is not a book to be read for enjoyment because it is just so dense and the many, many passages about whale anatomy and behaviours etc were a bit textbook-ish and felt never-ending. I chose an audiobook version of Moby Dick (narrator: Anthony Heald) and that made the experience more bearable. If I'd been reading it myself, I may not have made it to the end.

Occasionally, while reading, I wanted to recommend The Old Man and the Sea instead which shares some plot similarities. I really dislike that book but at least it felt like it had more action.
I recently had a conversation on here about treating classics differently to other books because you have certain expectations and there is an implicit pressure to rate them higher as they must have achieved classic status for some reason. I think that is what has affected my rating of this book. It would have been lower than 3 stars if the writing wasn't as good because... TOO MUCH MEANDERING MINUTIAE, MELVILLE!

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