Moby Dick.

By Herman Melville.

Synopsis:
In case you don't already know... Ishmael (the narrator) signs up on a whaling voyage, along with his friend, Queegqueg. The captain is the legendary Captain Ahab, who's probably a bit barking...

Review:
I really liked this. It was a bit of a slog, mainly due to the nineteenth centuryisms (at times I didn't have the faintest idea what was going on. And strangely enough, most of those times involved Starbuck... He's obviously a very nineteenth century character), but at the same time, it worked wonderfully.

The style is very approachable, although the tone varies hugely throughout the book. This is mainly because it is written, not only from Ishmael's point of view, but as if you're in his head, privy to his chain of thought. Hence the shifts in style, as his thoughts vary from topic to topic, although always with whaling and whales present in the background. In fact, the actual storyline only takes up a tiny percentage of the narrative.

Also, the book is helpfully divided into tiny chapters, each of which is pretty much self-contained, which makes it very easy to read a couple of chapters when you've got half an hour to kill, then come back to it a week later and still know what's going on. Also you can leave off when you start to get bored and not feel too guilty about it.

The practical side of whaling is explored in great depth, and although the book itself barely touches on the anti-hunting side of things (I'm not very good with history, but the anti-hunting side of things probably wasn't even around then), I managed to watch Star Trek 4 (that's the one with the whales) in the middle of reading it, and therefore got all guilty for a while. My advice to anyone in a similar situation - it's fictional. Don't be stupid.

The characters are beautifully defined, each with a personality that varies enormously from those around him (Except the harpooneers, they kinda blended together. Luckily they've got the strangest names, so it was easy to keep tabs on them). The story is very much a tragedy, made more so by the fact that just about everyone knows how it's going to end, so you can't even hope... By the way, I'm sorry if I just gave the ending away, but I read it knowing what the ending was going to be, so you can too. Hah.

Conclusion - worth the effort.