Moby Dick was not hugely popular, but it was really the scathing reviews of his next two books that ended his career as a novelist. Pierre is hard to defend, but The Confidence Man is an excellent book. It was just very much at odds with what the 19th century audience expected of a novel. It didn't help that people wanted Melville to keep writing suggestive novels about naked Polynesian women.

What they suggested in the show was that it was at least as much about the popular attention turning away from the sea and to the West.

I'm with Ginger. The Confidence-Man is an amazing novel, even more so for how much it presages modernism and postmodernism.

Moby Dick is David Simon's favorite novel. But it also looks big and scary so I've never had the nerve to attempt it. Even though I thought Infinite Jest would get me laid once. It did not. And I still don't know what's on the fucking videotape, either. DFW was pretty harsh about fandom, too, but then I'm alive and he's not. Ever since, I've been suspicious of extra-big books.

But it also looks big and scary

Like a giant white whale bearing down on you!

It's actually more readable than a lot of bigass classic must-read novels. People just get bogged down in the chapters which aren't moving the narrative forward. If you like randomly reading the Encyclopedia, however, this will be less of an issue as you'll nod your head as Melville goes off on yet another tangent. (Yet, the tangents are essential in my mind. And kind of why it's not just a Ripping Yarn.)

I finally read "Hunger Game" last night at the bookstore in Spokane because I saw the sequel came in (before it did!) off the hold list at the library. And then went to the library tonight when I got in from the airport, and both of them were waiting for me! So I'm probably going to re-read it after I read "Catching Fire". Much looking forward to that. Loved it. SO awesome.

Also picked up (on a rec from...DW?) The Disreputable History of Frankie Laundau-Banks, and just read it very quickly. Fun, but not quite what I thought when it was recc'd. I liked the plotting, but found the sense of disconnection too realistic and depressing! Now I'm not sure I can read a dystopic revolution book right after...may need something fun and fluffy.

And the tangets are skimmable, erika. Think of reading it 15 chapters a week (the chapters are super short) and you'll finish quickly enough (like in two months).

The thing that most surprised me was how funny parts of it are. But, it's true, I'm a bit bogged down in whale trivia.

It's much easier to read, even unassisted, then I found Don Quixote or The Divine Comedy were with assistance.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Laundau-Banks

meara, I loved this book, even though it was extremely depressing. And because of it, my students read Panopticon before they read Handmaid's Tale.

The thing that most surprised me was how funny parts of it are.

Yup. That was quite a shock to me, to be amused by this Big Important Book.

The flip side to that is I had expected Don Quixote to be funny and it simply wasn't. It was the equivalent of watch from the hall. That book just made me so angry and so sad.