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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com

Just want to keep this top of mind, really. They should add some more "social" 2.0 aspects to this site -- blog your list, share your list, some better search options, "see other people's comments on this book"... stuff like that. Either way, I can actually see myself using this for recommendations.

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So it goes.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

I just found out Kurt Vonnegut died.


So fitting - him with them Pall Malls -- Photo Matthias Rietschel/Associated Press

I read my first book by him, Breakfast of Champions, during the year that I spent waiting for life to start -- between high school and my first semester at LSU. I read it in a day and was ready for more. I wound up reading almost everything that he wrote (that was fiction) and even liked the movie adaptation of Slaughterhouse 5. But probably only because I'd read it three times and already knew the parts of the story that were left out.

I'm not going to write a eulogy here, I need to go to sleep, but I will admit that when people tell me they're not really into reading, I tell them it's because they haven't read any Kurt Vonnegut yet. He's a great author to begin with, though trust me, save Breakfast of Champions for later and start with Slaughterhouse 5 or Cat's Cradle.

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moby dick

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

I can finally say that I have finished Moby Dick. I'm in not even gonna say how long it took to finish, but it was longer than any book I've ever read by far. And it's really not a long book, comparitively speaking-- only about 450 pages. And, contrary to what people who haven't read the book seem to believe, it's not a boring book. Though I can say that there are some boring parts of the book. But it's not action-adventure. It's about consumption, being consumed with a thing, an idea, a "monomaniacal belief" in a certain purpose -- to destroy evil. To destroy the whale.

And to understand Ahab's drive to destroy the whale you have to understand more than just that it took his leg and left him with an ivory peg in its place. You have to understand whales. And you have to understand whaling boats, the whale hunting trade, the process of hunting and processing a whale, and you have to understand the whales themselves. You have to understand the type of people that hunt whales, and you've got to understand the types of whales that they hunt. It's not just any whale, it's the sperm whale. And, according to Ishmael, the sperm whale isn't just any whale.

It's obviously about more than the hunt of whales, and the hunt of one whale in particular. It's Ahab's mission, he believes, to seek out the source of a particular evil and destroy it. I have to say, too, that as I got further into the book I understood the inevitable confrontation that was coming, and I understood the dangers that were implied throughout, but even as i was 40 pages from the end, then 20, then 2... I still had no idea that it was going to end the way that it did. I knew that Ahab would die, or the whale would die. It obviously had to come to that. But what happened was much more catalysmic than i expected. And I'm glad, really. I'm glad that it wasn't necessarily one of the outcomes that i'd assumed it was, it was more than that.

I don't think that I have to worry too much about spoilers, you people don't read. I know it's true. I think I know three people who've read this book. When I was done part of me really had to wonder if, as Moby Dick dragged Ahab down into the deep with him, if Ahab and his crew had done enough damage to Moby Dick that he died too. Part of me felt that Melville had left it vague enough for this possibility, but as I've thought and read about it a bit since, I don't think that's the case. I think Moby Dick did just as it appears -- he destroyed the whole ship, crew and all, everything and everyone but Ishmael, and he descended back into the deep of the sea to continue on. And it's odd to me, really, that if Moby Dick symbolizes evil, which it seems pretty evident that this is the case, why is it that evil "wins"?

Perhaps the whale is not evil, perhaps it's just that the whale is, he simply exists as a whale (albeit a whale that causes an awful lot of damage with seemingly ill intent), but that Ahab, and those he convinces to follow in his mania, are destroyed by Ahab's idea of the white whale as being evil. I mean, it's not like the whale sought them out. Any other living creature would have fought tooth and nail against would-be captors too. Except for doodle bugs, but that's because there are no white doodle bugs. It may be that it's not that the whale killed them so much as their pursuit of the whale killed them.

Moby Dick on Sparknotes

I have seriously considered limiting my reading list for the near future to only books that i can find on Sparknotes afterward. I love that site.

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