Tag Archives: Moby Dick

“Call me Ishmael.”

A wonderful book review of a new biography of Herman Melville. I like this: Readers will note that I have said nothing very much about Moby-Dick . But what can anyone say? Its quietly portentous first sentence is as famous … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

EM Forster on Dostoevsky and Moby Dick

More from EM Forster’s ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL. (I introduce what this book is about here.) Moby Dick is one of the grandest most exciting reading experiences I’ve ever had. It wasn’t like a book at all. It was an … Continue reading

Posted in writers | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Re-Reading Books

I’m re-reading Call of the Wild right now. Which got me to thinking about books you read in junior high and high school which made little to no impression on you, and then you went back and re-read them, as … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Tagged , | 19 Comments

Recommended Reading: Fiction

And now for the Fiction recommendations. (See the Non-Fiction ones below) Choosing books out of all the books I love is rather torturous for me. So this is an impulsive, scanning-the-bookshelves-with-mine-eyes and writing titles down spur-of-the-moment kind of list. Here … Continue reading

Posted in Books, James Joyce | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Cherished Books

I just moved, hired a company to do it for me because … well, because I just have too many damn books to move, and there is nothing heavier than a box of books. My former apartment was a 5th … Continue reading

Posted in Books | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Melville’s Whiteness of the Whale

“I know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness is not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of objects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there aught of terror in those appearances … Continue reading

Posted in Miscellania | Tagged , | Leave a comment