Download or read book Moby Dick in 101 Pages written by Herman Melville and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Herman Melville finished Moby Dick, he wrote a letter to his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne and said: "I have written a wicked book and feel spotless as the lamb." Unfortunately, although many have purchased, very few people have actually finished this "wicked" book. One early critic said: "Melville's book can sink a ship with greater force than any whale that I know of." Moby Dick, as originally written, is just plain heavy, difficult to read from cover to cover. It's so thick, often digressive, too esoteric, with pages and pages of technical details about the whaling industry, the anatomy of a whale and pursuits that are just not captivating enough to a low attention, modern audience. Many High-school students and college literature majors are assigned Moby Dick, only to get through the first couple of chapters and substitute the cliff notes instead. Melville received a rather indifferent, empty reception to the release of Moby Dick. Melville died a poor man, not able to anticipate the impact that this book would have into the 20th and 21st centuries. More people need to read Moby Dick. In it we learn of the mysteries of Melville and more of human nature and our relationship to God, ourselves and others. Melville has been called a "rational man who wants God to exist, to be our rescuer, to act as a confidant in our moments of crisis and to give us reassurance that, over the horizon of our deaths, we will survive." By reading his book, we can learn to stretch our arms to include others; different than ourselves. The close relationship between Ishmael (the narrator) and Queequeg (a cannibal) proves this with Melville's infamous line "how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them". Though over 50 million copies of Moby Dick have now been sold, how many of those have been read? Do they sit next to the bible, lonely on the bookshelf? An early literary sailor in the 1850's said of the book: "About the whaling voyage, I am half way in the work, a strange sort of book, blubber is blubber you know." Many of us needed a new, modern reading of Moby Dick. One that will be as interesting and captivating to the High School student addicted to their phone and Tik Tok, as it will be to the retired baby boomer looking to connect with the curious, yet cynical Ishamel or the obsessive Captain Ahab. By trimming the blubber we hope to invite a more readable journey of self discovery and introspection; the 101 pages have been carefully and concisely refined, annotated and improved for a fine adventure and enjoyable read.