If I hadn’t been doing this as a buddy read, it would have been a DNF. There were moments where I absolutely loved Melville’s writing, unfortunately those moments were few and far between, drowned amid hundreds of pages of whale trade information suited for a textbook. There were also the rambling chapters of Ishmael’s inane views on life, whales, and sailing. The last 150 pages are where it really gets into the plot, of course the last 150 pages are some 500 pages into the novel. If I were to read the story again, I’d skip all of the filler and only read the chapters that contain actual plot.  

Moby-Dick is one of my favorites I've read this year. It is top-tier classic literature. If you have not read it yet, let me just say that they ship it to you badly. Moby-dick is about the whale, yes. But Moby-Dick is really about one man and his descent into total and utter madness. Featuring so much of what I personally love from classics, the main character, Ishmael, loves to give you all his knowledge of boating, whaling, and everything in-between in the most pretentious way possible. Moby-Dick is wonderous, fascinating, horrifying at times, and a ride the entire way through. I absolutely loved it and could not put it down.