• p.77-8 - you know something's about to go down when a beggar-like old man hints at some horror surrounding a captain called ahab when he himself is called elijah
  • OH SNAP
  • i need to catch up on some bible stories
  • OH MELVILLE YOU AND YOUR OBVIOUS FORESHADOWING AND EXPLOITATION OF ALLUSION. the suspense! who said moby dick was boring? this has got to be one of the most entertaining books i've encountered thus far. well maybe that's because i get excited about effective use of literary devices, so i dunno maybe nobody else cares for it. i'm a technical geek when it comes to literature, and i enjoy the psychological play between the writer and the reader through the underlying intent of the writing. except most readers are only about the story. but same goes for the three musketeers. people think fancy clothing and large moustaches and gay men with swords, when in fact the story had the most dramatic and exciting climaxes i've ever read that i nearly missed my stop while i was on the skytrain. very well written story, and that was just the english translation. so readers, if anybody tells you a particular book you haven't read is boring, READ IT.
• 2/23/12. the deeper i delve into Moby Dick and the longer my vocab list grows, the more i'm convinced i have to read this book AT LEAST two or three more times. some people have read it 14 times so hey. as usual, whenever i read a classic or anything that pre-dates the world wars, i rip off a piece of blank paper and keep track of all the words and phrases i don't fully understand and occasionally put an asterisk beside page numbers that include quotes or passages (sometimes in this case, entire chapters) that stand out to me. the thing is, moby dick is more than just words i didn't even know existed. there is at least one allusion to a historical event or famous fictional character or story on every page or so that isn't known to me. every time he talks about somebody - and usually it's so that he can expound on what he had written in the foregoing (<- look at that, a word that i've read before but only through reading moby dick have i become comfortable with using) paragraphs - i'm just like "HERMAN BABY I'M JUST AN EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD LIVING IN THE 21ST CENTURY SOME OF MY FRIENDS HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF YOUR BOOK I DON'T KNOW WHO OR WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!" so that's what i'm going to list the second time i read this book. after, of course, i finish it the first time and search up all the definitions of the words on my vocab list and THEN fill up the margins with definitions according to where each vocab word is placed. but for the second read, i'm just going to focus on listing all the allusions and references, and have a sharper eye for quotes and phrases that i like. again, following the second round i will do my search-up and expand my notes. and then maybe after that i can finally read through this book without the abundant confusion and feelings of exclusion, and enjoy it as it is! (but instead of holding the pristine, unmarked book that i bought two years ago at macleod's, this time it will probably be half-falling apart with spine cracks and dogears and scribbles everywhere) anyway, there's a small glimpse into what my life will look like in the next few years, as well as my reading methods (that have helped me tremendously in getting through school and keeping my mind sharp despite skipping half the amount of hours i should ihave been in class and doing about....20% of all the homework and projects i was assigned)

part I