its a 180 read.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4104406&forum_id=2#37009809)

My first read of it I was like wtf I'm gonna have to skip this chapter and that one. Looking back there's a chapter here and there that's a dry slog, but when you finish reading and look back you see how importance "obsession" is in the book and why those chapters were there. But man getting through some of those chapters was a slog.

I really loved, and wasn't expecting, the mystical / supernatural elements of the book.

It really is a masterpiece though. One of the top few books I've ever read, and I'd have to rank Ahab as my GOAT literary character / most interesting character of all time to me.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4104406&forum_id=2#37018301)

Chapter 7, last paragraph:

"It needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a Nantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky light of the darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who had gone before me. Yes, Ishmael, the same fate may be thine. But somehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine chance for promotion, it seems -- aye, a death in this business of whaling -- a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat and stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4104406&forum_id=2#37018106)

From my understanding and what I can remember - I thought the pursuit of the white whale was much more personal, and obsessive, for Ahab - especially after his past encounters when the beast got the best of him or w/e - but I had always understood his obsession as very personal rather than wanting to attain some external greatness and legacy?

E.g. Didn't he trick the crew, or at least some subset of the people on the ship, as to what the real mission of the voyage was? Because it was his obsession, highly intimate reasons - otherwise he wouldn't have had to deceive anyone to come on the voyage he could've promised anyone greatness and fame if it was about greatness and external achievement?

I don't think there's a wrong interpretation - I'm just curious since it's been a while since I've read the book.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4104406&forum_id=2#37018307)

"The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us."

"Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one moment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of the tinkling glasses within."

"For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal."

"Yes; all these brave houses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the bottom of the sea."

"Entering, I found a small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors' wives and widows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks of the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart from the other, as if each silent grief were insular and incommunicable."

"But faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope."

"...for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4104406&forum_id=2#37018025)

- East of Eden / Of Mice and Men

- Blood Meridian / The Road / No Country for Old Men

- Lonesome Dove

- The Sound and the Fury / As I Lay Dying

- For Whom The Bells Toll / A Farewell to Arms / The Old Man and The Sea

- On The Road

- The Call of the Wild / White Fang

- All The King's Men

- A Confederacy of Dunces

The only real thing is that I fucking loathe Hawthorne, and I thought Catch-22 was mediocre.

I've yet to read any Michener, but I've been told by people who know my taste well that I'd like him, so after reading a few of his works, some of them may appear here. I also haven't read all of Infinite Jest, and the parts I have read were years ago, so after a recent reading of that in its entirety, I may include it as well.

I really loved Twain's novels as a child, but I don't get something out of them the way I do the ones listed above.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4104406&forum_id=2#37018218)

He often ignores the principle of Chekhov's Gun, and even when he doesn't, he's the opposite of concise.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4104406&forum_id=2#37018304)

a slave cost 400 to 800 dollars...the median income for a white male at that time was maybe 200 dollars...no credit...you had to have money or collateral...how many white men today can put up 50K in cash for a business expense?

and that would be just one slave...fact is that the rich owned slaves...the top 1%...

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4104406&forum_id=2#37018503)