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[–] 6 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I'm about 200 pages in, it's really good. But I wish there was a primer I could read about the themes, symbols, and historical context of the book. Just so I know what I'm looking out for. Searching for things on the Internet has gotten frustrating though. I did find the website that has notes about what all the words mean though.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago

    This sort of advice would be more useful 200 pages ago... but anyway it's always good to search for an annotated edition. I read Norton critical edition,* it was really good, had diagrams showing what the different parts of the boat are called, a glossary, supplementary essays, and throughout the text all sorts of footnotes (some of them maybe too explicitly interpretative, but oh well). But I believe even the slightly more modest but still seriously prepared editions such as Oxford World Classics would do the job.

    * a critical edition means the editors didn't just reproduce an existing text, but worked off the most "original" materials available, such as the first edition or the author's own manuscripts

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago*

    There are also a few, more recent companion books that give a lot of historical context to both Melville and whaling, etc

    Why Read Moby Dick? By Nathaniel Philbrick

    Ahab's Rolling Sea, by Richard J King

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