Moby-Dick (Thrift Editions)

What a long book! I'd forgotten how long it is. I probably had much more reading stamina back when I read it as a teen. It's as rip-roaring a tale as it ever was. You can see the ocean, the ship, and the whalers in Melville's energetic writing. You don't get many books with this setting. The allusions to India and Indian things are a pleasant surprise for an Indian. So is the extent to which science, geography, mathematics, etc., had already advanced even so long ago as the 1850s, when this book was written. But the king is the story itself and the deep understanding of what obsession and vengeance feel like. And there's a vein of humour and wit that runs throughout the book, a pleasure in itself and a silver lining on the dark quest. I'm not sure how many people there are in the world who've read Moby Dick or will read it, given the size and the somewhat old English. But I feel a kindred spirit with them.

I wanted to write this book since I was getting a lot of reference from the movies turns out. It’s hard to understand, but it worth every penny ….loved it.

Moby Dick isn't just a book; it's a seafaring saga that hooks you like a giant whale on a harpoon! Herman Melville weaves a maritime masterpiece that takes you aboard the Pequod with Captain Ahab on his relentless quest for the infamous white whale. The language is as vast as the ocean it describes, and yes, there are chapters about whales that might make you ponder life's mysteries, but the adventure is worth every wave of words. This book captures the spirit of the sea, the thrill of the hunt, and the complexities of obsession. So, if you're ready to set sail on a literary voyage, Moby Dick is your ticket to an epic oceanic adventure!

Got the book for ₹350. It was supposed to take six days, but arrived in two. The packaging was in a hard cardboard box, so the binding and pages were safe in transit. Kudos to Amazon/Seller for choosing to do this rather than the poly bag packaging they sent last time (which sadly ruined the spine of my Wuthering Heights book). As for the book itself, the Oxford World's Classics edition includes a descriptive introduction, a well researched etymology, very helpful explanatory notes with words marked with asterisks in the work itself for references, and most helpfully Melville's personal letters to Hawthorne regarding this book. It makes for a very comprehensive book to own, and I would recommend it to anyone for this price (the MSRP sticker quotes ₹399, so do not pay any more than that for the sellers that have upmarked it for no reason at all, and look at another publishing in this price range!). The cover of it was a bit dirty, but it was most probably due to the age it sat on the shelf than anything else, and there were still no visible signs of any damage on the cover or the pages themselves. As for the seller, I got it from Manav Books and would personally recommend them to another buyer, though your own experience may vary. All in all, I was worried when I ordered due to it being the last one in stock and with it being marked at a third of the price of the next lowest seller, but I got a perfectly good copy of it that lives up to my satisfaction. As for Melville himself, well, the praise you've heard for him is probably less than what he deserves. The prose is utterly brilliant in execution, and the destructive narrative approach with a non-linear approach is somehow made to work really well. I won't comment much on the metaphysical or the alussions or the metaphors or the references (of which have already been made many in my short time reading it!), but trust me the level of care and devotion put into writing it is second to none. I'd suggest this for someone who already has experienced reading Shakespeare's works (especially Macbeth and King Lear, at the minimum), Paradise Lost by John Milton, and old verses of significant literary importance if it be possible. The author expects you to be well-read and highly intellectual. There's a bar of entry into getting into the book and enjoying it to its fullest potential, but for an experienced reader this is a mesmerising experience. Hemingway was wrong: American Literature does not start with Huckleberry Finn; it starts with Moby Dick. PS: The font size is bigger than the font in Penguin's edition of Paradise lost, and the print and paper quality are far better so don't worry on that front.

Thank you Amazon . I purchased this book for my son and he is extremely happy after receiving this gift.

The book is a classic and that's why I wanted to get a hardcover version of it. The cover of this hardcover edition by Chartwell Classics is beautiful, but unfortunately, the paper quality is thin and you can see the type on the other side. Also, the type is tiny and crammed together. Wouldn't recommend this edition. Better go for the Penguin Classics hardcover, the paper quality is much better.

“Poet, painter and philosopher” a reviewer once called Melville. His subject matter and writing style are welded together as firmly as the 12 intertwining steel rods that make up Ahab’s harpoon and the fate of Ahab and the whale itself. The epic process of trawling through until the final confrontation mirrored The Pequod’s journey to same. As the end approached and I caught whiff, through one nostril, of the white whale’s proximity in the final pages, I deliberately slowed down my reading to more fully appreciate the journey, and because by now my reading eyes had synced with Melville’s Shakespearean rhythms, swirling poetry, dry wit, and grandiloquent turn of phrase, the final chapters were more joy than reward. The wit - after the crew had hauled all the heavy oil barrels up on deck: “top-heavy was the ship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head”. and: “The (whale’s) milk is very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well with strawberries.” The poetic: “In the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and softcymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.” The tormented Shakespearean soliloquizer: “what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.” The philosophical: “consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life” And the haughty self-referential: “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.” Never was a book’s plot more secondary to its themes. It’s man versus everything; fate, circumstance, demons, ego, expectation, classism, religion, God, nature, empathy, understanding, brotherhood, the universe. An unforgettable and hard-won experience.

Livro novo e entregue sem qualquer dano físico.

El libro llegó un poquito después del día pactado, pero todo bien. El libro es una joya brutal de la literatura.

Having reached the mid-life point, I didn't "get around to" reading MOBY-DICK until just recently. I'm certainly glad that I finally stopped putting it off. Herman Melville's work is truly one of the most amazing books I have read. As others have pointed out here, it's not always an easy read, but it is well worth devoting time to. Indeed, I approached it as if it were an artisan cheese or a fine glass of wine; I ingested it slowly, savoring it over a period of months. MOBY-DICK is told (mostly) through the eyes of a seaman ("Call me Ishmael"), beginning with his journey to Nantucket to find a job on a whaler and then continuing with his voyage on the Pequod. The initial chapters (minus the introductory matter) are somewhat misleading in that they employ a traditional narrative structure--quite amusingly describing Ishmael's first encounter with the cannibal harpooner Queequeg--and the unaware reader who enjoys this initial rollicking ride may be disappointed with the "digressions" that follow. Once the Pequod sets sail, the narrative adopts the rhythm of a voyage, i.e., long days at sea, labor-intensive with respect to the upkeep of the vessel, but otherwise dull, interspersed with heart-stopping whaling and welcome encounters with other ships. This pattern of life at sea is reflected in the book's structure in this way: the long, uneventful days lend time to the narrator to present the history, science, and art of whales and whaling, while the whaling and ship encounters brings the narration back to a more-or-less (and often less) traditional narrative structure. The core story is well known, and would be familiar even to those who haven't much other knowledge of the work. (Anyone who's seen or read JAWS would recognize the story.) A psychologically scarred and physically mutilated man, Ahab, the captain of the Pequod, is obsessed with exacting retribution against the highly dangerous white whale that made him a cripple, not to mention killing many other men. His loyal first mate, Starbuck, tries to reason with him, but Ahab is unable to respond to reason; Ahab feels that he is acting out a preordained role. MOBY-DICK, which was first published in 1851, is a surprisingly modern work. Melville explores the story using multiple perspectives and various literary devices, most notably inserting chapters written as scenes in a play. An example of this can be observed beginning with Chapter 36, "The Quarter-Deck": This is a seminal chapter in that in it Captain Ahab explains the Pequod's true mission--to kill Moby-Dick--and his personal motivation for doing it: "Aye, Starbuck; aye, my hearties all round; it was Moby-Dick that dismasted me..." Chapters 37-40, which are given sequential temporal titles ("Sunset," "Dusk," "First Night Watch," "Midnight") provide reflections on Ahab's speech to the crew from the perspective of three of the main characters, Ahab, Starbuck and Stubb; these are followed by a chapter written like a script of a musical play and which involves a number of crewmen. There is, in short, considerable exploration of and experimentation in narrative forms. What I found particularly moving were the small, almost painterly touches in Melville's writing, such as the image of a hawk in the far distance dropping Ahab's hat into the sea (Chapter 130, "The Hat"). Also delighting the reader are the intensely cinematic moments, e.g., Starbuck, standing outside Ahab's door and full of angst, ponders murderous thoughts while handling a musket (Chapter 123 "The Musket"). MOBY-DICK is a fabulous piece of art and is veritable literature worthwhile reading.

The quality of the pages and the cover are not ideal.