I had never gotten around to reading this novel, but keep seeing it referred to as America's greatest novel. The story is well known, though I actually had no idea how the book ended. In fact, I never seemed to get much past the part where Queequeg is sharing an iffy inn room with Ishmael near the very beginning of the story.
Ahab is a scary character though Melville humanized him a bit via sympathy for Starbuck and Pip. The long passages about whaling detail are as tiresome as advertised (sorry).
So this was good and well worth working through, but I'm not sure how it gets on "greatest" lists.
I posted a couple of the illustrations, by some guy named Rockwell Kent. Those were very entertaining, and there were lots of them scattered throughout the book. Helped break up the "Modern Library" edition, which ran just over 800 pages (read at gym).
Info about Melville, who is a pretty interesting guy, can be found here. The article says "Moby Dick" wasn't that popular when it first appeared. Interesting.
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