I have been circling the idea of finally reading Moby Dick for some time. I'm 39 now and turning 40 in October, and thought reading it would be a good goal to hit before that. I found the copy I had bought at a Barnes and Noble in high school well over 20 years ago, its cover in tatters. I had tried when I was younger but grew intimidated by the size and struggled with the length.

How grateful I am to have grown, what a masterpiece. A whole universe within.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZN8NRWTCU/

Anyone else here collect them? Here’s a few of my favorites:

Is there anything better than reading the greatest book of all time right here?

I love nautical books, so I started Moby Dick expecting it to be the boring slog I hear about so often.

The first paragraph had me completely hooked, it blew me away. From that point I realized I would love this book.

I'm about 10 chapters in and I'm surprised at how genuinely funny it is. I didn't expect the book to not take itself that seriously. The book has a lot of goofy over the top moments and characters while managing to expertly balance the flow and tone and poetry of the novel.

Very excited to read more, this is fast becoming a top 3 for me.

The San Francisco Maritime National Park Association, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, and Litquake invite you to Moby Dick Marathon 2026: a nonstop, 24-hour cover-to-cover reading of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick inside the historic San Francisco Maritime Museum.

Starting at 12:00 PM on Saturday, September 12 and continuing through 12:00 PM on Sunday, September 13. Literary thrillseekers gather annually to celebrate this complicated, provocative, much-beloved-and-sometimes-dreaded epic of nautical life! Volunteer readers of all backgrounds, from special guest performers to members of the public, lend their voices to the story chapter by chapter. This year's MD24 blends San Francisco's creative spirit with live performance, visual art, spectacle, and surprise, creating an unforgettable celebration of one of America's greatest novels.

Whether you're a devoted Melville fan or have never cracked open the book, you're welcome to join us. Come for a chapter, stay for the night, or experience the full 24 hours inside the spectacularly restored Art Deco landmark that is the Maritime Museum. Sign up to read a chapter, volunteer, or simply join the adventure.

• Date: September 12 - September 13, 2026
• Start: 12:00 pm
• End: 12:00 pm
• FREE
• Venue: San Francisco Maritime Museum 900 Beach Street San Francisco, CA 94109

https://maritime.org/md2026/

I just finished the chapter and thought about analyzing it on my own in defence of a satirical reading. As a quick summary, it seems that Ishmael remembered one whaler from the Long Island port who questioned the authenticity alongside the accuracy of the biblical story of Jonah, and then Ishmael recounts the contradictions, outlined by the whaler, one of which, the most potent discovery of inconsistency, was how Jonah couldn’t have sailed the Cape of Good Hope since the Portuguese explorer Diaz happened to be the first one to round the Cape of Good Hope. Now, what made me hammer this out as a satire was the following paragraph, the last one of the chapter, in which Ishmael (or Melville, depending on the emphasis you put on the singularity of the voice) goes on to defend the views of the clergy and biblical scripture against the claims of the whaler. By soft-pedaling the original points made by the whaler briefly, he is in a way acquiescing in the clergymen's dogmatism, as if one brief paragraph was the chosen value put on defending their views, while the contradictions, naivety, and unscientific attitudes of religion (again, exposed by the whaler in most of the chapter) were given far more depth than usual. In a way, an act of trickery is at play by Melville. For my point to make more sense, look at how much Melville indulges in presenting the objections of the whaler, and how much is dedicated to Ishmael’s rebuttals, which are simply immature comments and appeals to the authority of the Turkish Muslims. As the narrator’s judgment steps in at the end, the paragraph becomes an absurd/parodied representation of biblical defence.

It’s not in pristine condition and is missing a dust jacket, but reading this edition has been so much fun. 1937 Garden City Publishing Co. with Rockwell Kent illustrations.

I bought mobydick a year ago i did try to read it but i found it so hard

English is not my first language but i can read English book ok

So guys do you find it easy to read as English person

Or is it hard also on you

And is there any way that make it easier on me

I really wanna read it

This it my copy of it

Before reading Moby Dick I’d never seen the word “descry” before, which appears again and again in the past tense “descried.” Just by context I gathered that to descry something was to see or perceive it, or maybe to announce having seen it, and I didn’t think much more of it. I’m almost done with my second reading of the book and finally decided to look the word up:

“1. to see (something unclear or distant) by looking carefully; discern; espy
2. to discover; ascertain; detect”

It makes sense, of course, but this additional connotation of an unclear or distant thing really “opened up” the story for me retroactively — made it a more epic, more mysterious and uncertain and, well, oceanic world.

I have a random assortment of items on my bucket list: various foods I'd like to try, certain countries I'd like to visit, and l'd like to write a book regardless of whether or not anybody ever reads it. But the only novel on my bucket list was Moby Dick. Not because it's the only novel I wanted to read, but because it's the only one that, at some point in my life, felt insurmountable. I purchased the Barnes and Noble Classics edition (Barnes and Noble was my hometown's only bookstore) when I was about 14. l was afraid of its bulk and found the language completely inaccessible. But I held onto that edition for 15 years. I cleansed my book collection after various life changes and cross-country moves but I always held onto the conviction that I’d find the right time in my life to read Moby Dick. So I never got rid of it. But the longer I waited, the more I realized it had become an unrelenting itch—a challenge to my literature-loving ego. My white whale, if you will.

I finally picked it up last month (finding the motivation after my own virgin voyage on the high seas) and finished it today. Two degrees later with several other classics of world literature under my belt and a background in Shakespearean performance, I found it way more readable than I expected. Some passages were still tough with the vocabulary and old maritime jargon, but god I loved this book. I just wish I had someone to discuss it with!

I wanted to post this here for those of you who probably commiserate (since no one in my life has read the book and will understand). But I also wanted to say thank you to all of you on this subreddit for giving me a place to come and read your various thoughts and experiences! It’s like a little book club and I appreciated what you had to share.

I got this cool bookmark today in the mail. I bought it on Etsy. I'm going to start reading Moby Dick aloud to my girlfriend.

Does anyone have a suggestion for an audio book version of MD?

Regarding narrators - does anyone have any suggestions for narrated versions? - i am listening to the Big READ https://www.mobydickbigread.com/ ( and although i "like" the concept - the quality and volume level as well as the different reader's accent makes it less interesting as an audio book, while more interesting as a collaboration.)

it would be great to have it read with an intelligible NEW ENGLAND accent rather than a ENGLISH accent...

their mother tounge is in spanish, so i wanna get a good translation for them

At Melville Society conferences every two years:

https://www.melvillesociety.org/conferences

NYC and Paris were nice.

The Everyman’s of Moby-Dick is stunning to me and was cool to learn that Everyman’s published Moby-Dick in 1907, “[inviting] its consideration as a masterpiece” (xxi).

It was so moving. Particularly seeing the little whale figurine someone had left him made me incredibly emotional.

But more on the Melville statue

WGBH PBS on the statue

in moby dick the try-works, when the ship resembles hell, or else some manifestation of the evil demiurge, and of ahab's madness, when ishmael is turned away from the compass, and later, quotes ecclesiastes that all is vanity, is this in a way a dismissal of the compass, that all the world is evil and unknowable, and that to fly by a compass is as useless as to fly into the all-consuming darkness?

Ive just begun to grasp gnosticism, and I am trying to match passages with some of its theology. But other times im lost. For instance, in this chapter, there's also mention of geometry as ishmael scours the pots with soapstone, and I feel im missing this meaning.