Just read Moby Dick, and it was fantastic. The writing style is nice, and the story and plot are pretty good (though, by the end, you can kind of guess what the ending is...). What are your thoughts on it, /book/ ?
I haven't read it- but when studying the philosophy of literature I discovered that part of the novel is an essay on whales. I'd be interested in knowing whether you read the essay as an integral part of the novel, or whether it was more like he copy-pasted some irrelevant material to bulk it out, or whatever.
>>6 Oh, yeah. I think it's chapter 39. It felt relevant. Melville has a way of carefully setting up his stories. There's a few other little literary games in the book, too -- a fake play scene, memorably to me, in the chapter after the one on whales.