Yes. I read it about 10 years ago as well. I’m enjoying it more this time, perhaps because I know what to expect from it.
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You’ll have to explain this to me. I don’t get “1/q.”
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Oops… it’s supposed to be I/Q
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I’m one of those people who’ve long meant to read it, but haven’t quite gotten around to it, yet (hence the “well done” in my post above). 
It always sounded like a bit of a “serious literature” slog when I was in school, but at some point as an adult I ran across some stuff that made it sound much more interesting than I’d previously thought.
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It is a slog in that you can’t rush it. You have to give yourself over to Melville and let him tell the story at his own pace. I remember the first time I read it, I almost gave up because it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. But by the time I got to the second half I really got into it and it became gripping.
It’s hard to explain the book. It’s quite serious, and yet Melville is the type of person who can’t help being funny.
I had been trying to read “the Honorable Schoolboy,” but I cannot get into John LeCarré’s way of writing. Reading his novels is like watching one of those intentionally “glitchy” videos — twitchy and unpleasant. So I switched to Moby Dick, which has been like a soothing balm.
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I don’t get that either.
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Ishmael/Queequeg
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Oh. I’m dense.
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It’s not a quick read (I have the paperback edition), even though it’s not a thick book. The one thing that bugged me, being a reincarnated proofreader for H. L. Mencken (if he had one), was that she aged her mom 10 years in the caption of a photo of her mom as a child, saying it was from 1921. But in the text, she states her mom was four years old when her gramma sent her mom and aunt away during the Great Depression to live with another relative.
https://www.amazon.com/I-Ran-Into-Some-Trouble-ebook/dp/B07F73FQM2
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Another thought on Moby Dick —
Melville writes very densely, but he has short chapters. So read his book in small pieces, like eating cheesecake.
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That is how I got through it over a summer. I found it worthwhile and a great meditation on being human.
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Yes.
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I wrote this in high school, I think sophomore year, 1979-1980, and then one of the English teachers, Mr. Lombardini (no, really, he also led the Chess Club!) translated it into Latin.
And I dunno where the original English version is, so if someone wants to translate it - if you can read my cursive, LOL! - without using software (see, I think so much of you folks I just KNOW someone here knows Latin enough to do so!) to do so, feel free!
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I can understand the first line.
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I am going to take a stab at this for funsies. Last time I took Latin was 10th grade.
I am called Lucia
.My name means light
Therefore I am light
My light is waning
That clear light is ?
I live in the light [or possibly, The light lives within me]
(totally lost from this point on. Possibly even sooner)
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The landlord of the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the Try Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept hotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured us that cousin Hosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders. In short, he plainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck at the Try Pots.
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I’m of two minds about the hyperlinks–
the first is that half the people, upon hearing a book or an author name-dropped, will take it as a recommendation, rather than a description of dad’s character.
The second is that it reminds me of those sorts of websites where every seventh word seems to be connected with an affiliate link, on the off chance that reading a review of a film will put you in the mood to buy a blender.
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Everything you said, and also:
Articles like this (they’re practically their own genre) trouble me. First, because of the hoarding element, which for books is somehow excusable, although even as a lifelong lover of books I don’t see how. In my family loving books meant weekly trips to the public library and excitedly passing along bought books for the next person to enjoy. Very, very few actually were kept. My dad had one bookshelf to himself beside his armchair in the living room. My mum’s are in her sewing room, all quilting books (yes she reads novels but those get put in closets until they are passed on or redonated).
I have three book cases in my apartment, which always feels like an extravagance. I’m actually playing on doing anther thinning-out soon.
The other part is that these book hoarders in the elegiacs always stick pretty closely to the Western literary canon. In my family the line between literature and pulp is much blurrier. Agatha Christie’s classics sit next to Margaret Atwood, and spy novels can be found next to Shakespeare school editions. Ironically, our love of pulp means more women writers, and more writers of colour (Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou).
And I don’t mean our way was “better”, whatever that means, just more unsung.
Overall I’m very uncomfortable with this “greater volume possessed = greater love” concept. And then, yeah, the while link thing you’ve already mentioned.
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Perssonally, I hoard books. Sometimes, I even reread them twice.
My local library system has a very aggressive weeding policy, and their technical books are often three years out of date. If I decide I want to read an author from the beginning-- they often don’t have her first books-- only the ones that continue that books story,
Plus, I purchase a lot of obscure stuff from the used book trade. If anyone needs a copy of Geometry Processing for Design and Manufacturing, I’m your guy. Actually, it might have renewed relevance for makers… .
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