Well, and Melville too I guess, because I still recall how incredibly boring all my friends and I found Billy Budd, and my response to reading anything else he wrote has been a resounding "I would prefer not to" ever since.

Amen, my brothah. I do not like him, Sam I am. I do not like Melville man.

Melville does have his moments. For example, there's this chapter in Moby Dick: [link]

An excerpt:

Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say, - Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti.

I found Billy Budd both annoying and depressing and it might take someone holding a gun to my head for me to read it again. The rest of Melville is wondrous, though, and I hate the idea that Billy Budd is keeping people from Moby Dick and The Confidence Man, not to mention the accounts of Polynesia in Typee and Oomoo.

Mom! Calli made me choke on a carrot!

Calli made me choke on a carrot!

Hey, don't blame me! Melville wrote it.

I started reading The Demon's Lexicon after Betsy mentioned it in LJ. I like it so far, and I'm intrigued enough to keep reading, but -- having never watched the show -- it's pretty much Supernatural, right?

Also, the cover art makes me laugh and laugh, because it looks like Tom Welling. There's a whole CW network thing going on there -- reads like Supernatural, looks like Smallville.

Hah, it totally does.

With a touch of Damon (Ian Somerhalder) from Vampire Diaries. Total CW-fest.

Literature-Map - the tourist map of literature.

I'm a bit surprised by Douglas Adams. I guess he's more mainstream than I'd thought.

Where's the best place to read a good synopsis of the Amazon/MacMillan brouhaha? I understand that Amazon has pouted and at least mostly come round, but the details and precisely what they dropped lost me.