Moby Dick: Standing the Test of Time

This book is one that has been on my list of important things to read for a very long time. I happened upon it recently at a second hand store and was compelled to shell out a dollar and see if I could wade my way through it. I've always had the impression that the book was near endless, and quite possibly as tedious as I found Oliver Twist to be so many years ago (I was a teenager when I tried to read Dickens, so I should probably give it another go before the final rap of the gavel). At any rate, I was prepared to be a literary martyr on the pyre of sesquipedalian verbosity, but would count it as a kind of medal of honor on my lapel if I could but finish it. So, you can understand my amazement when I laughed out loud with amusement and shook with suppressed chuckles throughout the first several chapters. What in the world! I would never have thought a man with the name Herman Melville could put on such a party as this.

But even Herman could not have anticipated his four-footed arch-nemesis who currently roams the halls of Whitlark Manor and who put an unceremonious end to the literary festivities. I was awakened in the middle of the night to the sounds of heaving. Moby Dick may very well stand the test of time, but it unfortunately could not stand the test of cat vomit at point blank range. And I, dear reader, could not stand the test of discolored pages unless I had no knowledge of where the discoloration came from and could convince myself that it was a perfectly legitimate discoloration as a result of someone's green highlighter gone haywire. As it was, I knew perfectly well the tinge of partially-digested houseplants, and therefore laid this amazingly absorbent volume to rest.