Moby Dick had a much worse ratio of "size of good novel trying to get out / actual size", in my opinion.
replyMoby Dick has a bad (high) ratio of “people who try to read it like a thriller novel” to “people who read it for what it is”.
replyIf they want a short and lean "man fights fish/sea animal", they should stick to "The Old Man and the Sea". I'll stick with the investigation into finding purpose in a purposeless ocean.
replyI love how Moby Dick suddenly puts the story on hold and diverges into a chapter dealing with the classification of whales. 19th century novels do that a lot with Victor Hugo diverging into the architecture of Paris or whatever in his novels.
replyHuh, that’s surprising to me. The beginning details about the whales and whatnot surprised me but once I got going it was just marvelous. I’m not a very good book critic but it just had such a sensation of the sea and being crew on a ship run by an obsessive (that in itself somewhat interesting in that the narrator is just side character to the protagonist). And I loved the characterization of his obsession as a “cruel emperor” and the way men love water (“set a man to walking and he will infallibly lead you to water”).
replyIt’s been a long time since I read the book but it was doubtless one of the most enjoyable I’ve read.
> both (IMHO) are much longer than they need to be
replyI haven’t read moby dick but i dropped 20’000 leagues under the see a bit past half the book because of this. At some point the author spent pages and pages and pages describing the environment under the see, often repeating himself.
I’ll get back to that book at some point but yes, it’s longer than it needs to be.
I think at that point in my life I quite enjoyed how much he laboured the details. But the book Ready Player One had a few areas where the author just listed pop references, on and on, which reminds me of that.
replySomething that helps me is just giving myself license to skip stuff. It's usually better I finish a book since I will never come back to it. So I just jump around a few pages if I get bored.