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I’m reading Moby-Dick again. It’s been the book I’ve loved to hate since high school. It was mostly because I felt betrayed by the letdown of whales after the deceptive excitement of Queequeg in the beginning. By the time I got to the middle of the book and happened on seemingly endless descriptions in exhausting detail of fifty kinds of whales, I was miffed.”Where is the STORY?!”

So far, I’m really liking it on my second go round. Of course, I’m only on page 57. Still firmly with Queequeg. I might change my opinion when I get to Chapter LXXIV The Sperm Whale’s Head– Contrasted View, and the next, Chapter LXXV The Right Whale’s Head– Contrasted View. Although… I LIKE whales, so why didn’t I like reading about them?? I guess it was because I felt that fiction should be strictly  fiction and not interrupted by non-fiction.

If I end up loving Moby-Dick, then that means I just have Goethe’s Faust to swallow someday. I chickened out recently, postponing the evil day.

Assuming I finish Moby-Dick in a month and read nothing else, I will have read two books in three months. It’s like an identity crisis. I’ve always been the type of person who reads a lot without trying, and loves it. Now I don’t even have a reading log started for 2011. It’s so weird. I guess there are other things that I am besides being just a reader but it was always one of the main things. Now I’m a reader who doesn’t read for fun. I read about half of the assigned book for book club every month and everything else has to do with things I must do. It used to be one of my main ways to relax. I always used to read before going to sleep. And now I can almost sympathize with people who say they honestly do not have time to read when before I didn’t understand how that could be possible. Seriously, this is major.