Moby Dick

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Yesterday I finally finished ploughing through Moby Dick.  I bought it when I stocked up on classics at Thalia earlier in the year in order to fulfil my target of one classic a month this year.  All I new about the story was that it was about a whale.

I'm not sure if I still want to call this book the worst that I have ever read - as an avid reader I am loath to say that about any book, especially one that someone clearly considers a classic.  However I did have some major issues with this novel.

First of all, I didn't appreciate the many scientific chapters.  I didn't need to know the ins and outs of the anatomy of a whale.  There were also chapters which were seemingly irrelevant to the story and hard to follow.  For this reason, I think there are several sections of the book I probably wouldn't recall, I caught myself having to read some pages two or three times to let it sink in.

The book may have been half as long without the unnecessary chapters but it would have been much more readable for me.  

Even though I'm against the whaling industry, the novel is a sign of its times and I'm a big fan of the character - Moby Dick even if the book wasn't entirely my thing.