I've read Moby Dick three times and I'm thinking it's about time to read it again. It's great.

I don't know that Melville made much stuff up, at least in terms of day-to-day whaling. He did work as a seaman for about four years, much of that on whaling ships.

I read it -- kinda -- for a AmLit class, but didn't pay that much attention to it. I was too busy skipping class and getting high, and I was all a BritLit snob.

I read Moby Dick a few years ago. I was amazed at how funny it was. No one had ever told me it was enjoyable and amusing, just important and long.

I read it -- kinda -- for a AmLit class, but didn't pay that much attention to it. I was too busy skipping class and getting high, and I was all a BritLit snob.

me, too Well, minus the high. Although I often skipped class to go shoe shopping.

I went to college in a teeny town in MO. Th eonly place to buy shoes was Wal-Mart.

Remaining as stoned as possible was kinda a defense mechanism.

I was amazed at how funny it was.

Suddenly flashing back to that parody someone did -- DX? Tom Scola? -- which was all about Jonathan becoming morose, following funerals in the street etc., and inevitably heading back to Sunnydale. Perfect!

I did read Moby Dick, some years ago. I thought the writing was very good, but it was ultimately annoying as a story. And after a while the alternating chapters of inaccurate science got annoying as well. I was reading it the same time I was reading The Perfect Storm, which, as a work of fictionalized truth, I thought was a much better read.

Suddenly flashing back to that parody someone did -- DX? Tom Scola?

Yup, 'twas me.

Theodosia did a parody of the same paragraph, too. [link]

I read it back when I was - what, 10, 12? And was so unimpressed I haven't read it since. Perhaps my adult self would appreciate it more that my prepubescent self.

I do wonder if Clare would have liked Henry as much on first meeting him as she did, if she hadn't met his older self previously. It's possible that without the time travel, they might never have stayed together.

Ah, handy terms for the two types! I suspect I will be using these in future, I hope you don't mind. This is, as you say, very closed-loop; not only would it be bad to change something in the past (many open-loop stories revolve around efforts *not* to change the timeline), but it's actually impossible. You're right, he did say something along those lines.

I'm afraid that 'what would it take to make this relationship unhealthy?' is one of my fairly standard questions about fictional relationships; I think it has something to do with writing fanfic. And it really wouldn't take much in this case-- as you said yourself, Clare is strongly encouraged to be complicit because this has been so much a part of her life from such a young age. The flip side of that, of course, is someone who didn't have such a ... background, I suppose, of accepting time travel as a normal part of Henry's life, might not be able to tolerate it later on, and without that pre-formed connection he might not have found anyone-- though many of the characters who know or get to know him well seem to take the idea quite calmly.