Rating: 
Summary: Good novel, but it drags in parts
Review: I give this book a rating of seven because it is well above average, but it is certainly not close to being the best novel I've ever read. From the memorable first line, "Call me Ishmael," the tale and quirky characters hold the reader's attention; but parts of the book are SLOW (including a very long and dreary chapter on cetology.) It's a good book to read once, but it doesn't encourage repeated readings.
Rating: 
Summary: American Classics Cannot Be Written Better!
Review: Beyond a questionable doubt, Moby Dick is Melville's and American History's Greatest Literary Achievement. No other novel questions our existence as living, thinking human beings better. Though true that the plot chronicles the quest of a mad captain seeking vengeance upon a beast that maimed him, the book's deeper meaning of our relations to the universe cannot be ignored or the literal magic is lost. The novel addresses themes our of souls, relationships with each other, religions, morals, and ideas with such purity and genius that no other medium but the written word can convey it so beautifully. Moby is God, Ahab is Man, Starbuck is caution and religion, Stubb is ambivalence, Queequeg: trust, Fedallah: the devil. Read it or lose out on the best thing that you ever could.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful edition reprinted in paperback
Review: Moby Dick is my candidate for the Great American Novel, and this is a reprint of my favorite edition. Initially designed by Andrew Hoyem for a limited release by Arion Press, with illustrations by Barry Moser, this was reissued for mass market by University of California Press with illustrations and special page and type design intact. I and several of my friends have found reading this edition especially enjoyable, as all of the small aspects of design work to please the reader without detracting from the text. The hardcover edition is is my favorite version of Moby Dick, and this paper reprint is a close approximation of that experience.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest American Novel
Review: How to describe this book? It's wonderful, a revelation, a beam of white light piercing through the darkness of our souls. Ah, Melville, that great artist who aimed so high and found his mark with this awesome tale of the seas. Sure, it's an adventure tale, filled with action, danger, mystery, but strip all of that away and what do you have? MAN striving to get GOD to acknowledge HIM. Ahab(man), crazed by the injury caused by the Whale(God), his whole life reduced to the manic pursuit of that which eludes him. What a stirring metaphor. What a grand, operatic, messy, sometimes-overwritten, yet never boring novel. Great works are not perfect. Their very imperfection renders them great, for in the attempt at the sublime, the metaphysical, the ALL, they achieve an awe that stills the soul. And in the end, we have Ahab, glorious Ahab, unbowed, enraged, shouting his impotent rage at the Whale, as his life is swallowed away. Who's listening? Who's there, but the solitary narrator to witness the cataclysmic waste of it all? It's a difficult book. It's a slow book. It's a book that builds towards its climax with a stolidity that implies overwhelming confidence. But it rewards unlike any other book in American history. It's a matter of degrees, of first among equals, between this and LIGHT IN AUGUST, but MOBY DICK is the greatest American Novel.
Rating: 
Summary: A torturous tale. Read if you like punishment.
Review: For readers of good fiction (Rushdie, Conrad, Steinbeck etc.) this outdated and outmoded novel is an arduous and pointless effort. There are many better books on sea adventure
Rating:
Summary: Moby Dick- A Great Book
Review: Moby Dick is hard to get through, but worth it.
A lot of people put it down about halfway through, but I promised myself I wouldn't do it, and I am glad I did.
If you read this book, I promise it will give you everything you need to know about a seaman's life
Rating:
Summary: Moby-Dick Rocks
Review: Moby-Dick is the best book ever written, only excepting All The King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. All of the allusions and metaphors and meanings in this awesome book could only be found by spending a lifetime on it. "Moby-Dick and Taoism"? Get a life! Melville was not "warning" us about anything except the danger of maniacal pride. The whole point of the book is that Ahab doesn't give a blankety-blank about Taoism or any other philosophy that would tell him to lay off the whale; he hates the whale and he has willingly, deliberately submerged and sacrificed his reason and his soul to kill the white whale, and at times he even meditates on the madness of pursuing a dumb animal for an injury it no doubt was not even conscious of -- and then rejects this argument because of the insult to his pride offered by Moby-Dick's very unconsciousness. The stylism in Moby-Dick has never been surpassed; the rainbowing, extravagant images -- of the blank, mind-banishing terror of the color white, of the seductiveness of the dreamy reflective nature of the ocean from the crows-nest, of tired old Ahab throwing his pipe into the ocean, rejecting all comfort forever -- are breathtakingly striking and unforgettable
Rating:
Summary: A photographic negative of the New Testament
Review: Pick your favorite Holy Book, say, the New Testament. What does it do? Why, it tells you how to gain happiness and eternal fulfillment, and illustrates the consequences of those who follow those rules. Yes, it examines the state of those who disobey, but its focus is on the reward for action. Now look at Moby Dick. What does it do? Why, it tells you how to destroy your life. Page by excruciating page, it dissects and exposes the annihilation of Captain Ahab, a man destroyed not by a whale, but by his own consuming hatred and obsession for revenging himself upon his perceived "enemy". The final state of Ahab is no surprise; indeed, with his carcass lashed to the monster, Ahab merely assumes in reality the position he had occupied already for years. Horrific and powerful. If the Bible doesn't convince you to return good for evil because it's the godly thing to do, perhaps Moby Dick will persuade you to abandon your revenge fantasies out of simple self-preservation. PS For those who throw hissy fits over Melville's classification of whales as "fish" -- get over it. The book is not a scientific treatise, and in any case the specific definitions of "fish" and "mammal" weren't well-established or recognized when Melville published the book. So, using the definition of the time of "fish" as "sea animal", Melville was correct. Your criticism is anachronistic
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Summary: After the first 500 pages it really picks up!
Review: The last 50 pages of Moby-Dick are undoubtably the most exciting 50 pages ever written. It's the 750 pages you have to read first that are the problem. Long chapters about rope, on why the whale is a fish not a mammal (huh?), repressed homoerotic imagery and the monomaniacal ravings of Ahab, blah, blah, blah. But, just when you're getting ready to give it up and read a book where something happens, you know, like Emma, they finally see the great white whale and all hell breaks loose
Rating:
Summary: IT is just it
Review: While reading this book- you feel it is just it
Altough not poetry- you sense that every word
is just right, and cannot be taken out.
You are consumed by the book , and your soul gets embedded in the world created by it
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