Did I ever mention that people used to warn me off trying to read that book?  "Too much boring stuff between the good parts" was a typical warning.

So I sat down to read it, rolling right through as I waited for the boring stuff.  Then I came to the end of the novel, and I still hadn’t found anything boring or dull or tedious.  Just a great, masterful work.  I like some of his other books, but this one towers above them.  It deserves every single accolade it has ever received.

Gotta put it on my “reread” list…

It’s not all about the whale.

Moby Dick, of course. It’s been years since I read it. Good suggestion for a rainy day read.

N, you remind me of Richard Armour’s take on it: “give chapters XVII - CXI a miss; nothing but ocean in there.”

(Note that’s a dreadful paraphrase; don’t hold me to the exact chapter numbers.  The sentiment is accurate, though.  I think it’s from The Classics Revisited.)

You are all very good. Of course I left off the first sentence....Call me Ishmael. ;)

Nothing but ocean in there...

I wonder what he was expecting....

Armour is famously snarky.  If you haven’t read him, you ought to give him a try.  Very very dry wit.

Oh, and I didn’t recognize it.  I bowed to superior knowledge and assumed N and Sue were correct. 

N does have something of a photographic memory. I’m not sure how many books I would recognize from a brief passage.

I’ll look Armour up. I like very very dry wit. TY.

Oddly, what clinched it for me was the foreshadowing mention of coffins. 

As you’re no doubt aware, Queequeg (sp?) sleeps in one.  Otherwise, I might have thought the passage was intentional misdirection, as in “it sounds like it must be from Moby-Dick, but it isn’t”.

And oddly, the coffin reference sailed right over my head.

But you still have a near photographic memory.