I am almost finished with The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and one of the anvils that the author has been dropping everywhere since the beginning of the book has finally hit the protagonist. I was beginning to wonder if she was ever going to get a clue.

Hey, Laga, I realize it's been a few days, but I just checked in and want to say congratulations on finishing Moby Dick. It's one of my favorite books, if not my favorite, and I always find something new and funny in it.

I am struggling quite a lot with it, myself.I always thought, for instance, that I have a decent vocabulary and I suppose I have, by modern standards, but they used words quite differently in that era.Not least because there seem to be so many more of them in that one.

There were parts of Moby Dick that were completely (and unexpectedly hysterical. But I had major whale fatigue through the middle.

maybe that's it. Also, it's so different from the way people write today that reading it is a little like translating(even though I took a course on the Brontes in college, so it's not like I've never read anything 19th century, but to be honest, it's been a while.)And it(he?) is not a frigging fish. Sometimes I see that and get annoyed by it all over again, even though for all I know the point may be to show us that Ishmael is really wrong about that, too.

I was lucky that the edition of Moby Dick I read had a reader's guide in the back that explained all the literary references (did everyone know all the stories from the bible in 1850?) and a glossary of whaling terms. There was also a map of the Pequod's voyage and diagrams of whaling ships, whales, and whaling tools.

My sister brought home a children's book version which has some hilarity in what is chooses to leave out. Pip gets, "This is Pip, the cabin boy. Often very young boys went to work on whaling ships." And one of my favorite sections of the book was summed up with a picture of (I think it was Stubb) standing next to the whale carcass with a spear saying, "go away sharks!"

I did finish The White Tiger and I ended up enjoying the book even if I never liked any of the characters. It reminded me a bit of a Guy Ritchie film in that even if nobody is likeable, at least some bad shit happens to some of them.

did everyone know all the stories from the bible in 1850?

They did, actually. In most homes, the only book was the Bible. This is why not having at least some knowledge of the King James Bible is a real handicap in understanding anything written in English in the 17th through the 19th century.

did everyone know all the stories from the bible in 1850?

Didn't one of the Little House books have a Bible-verses-recite-off between the three oldest sisters, and Mary ended up winning? I think it was in The Long Winter, and it was a game that Ma made up to while away the long days stuck indoors.

There was also extensive Shakespeare knowledge. Sailors on shore leave would sometimes stage Shakespeare play's for their own amusement.

[Edit] Bible was universal. But Shakespeare was pretty common part of English and U.S. culture.

Now I'm reading Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille while I wait for the next Sookie Stackhouse novel to come through inter-library loan. Brane taking break nao, kthxbye.