Who recommends it
- The Best Action Adventure BooksReading list
Action, adventure, suspense, mystery, and of course, a great white whale. These are just a few of the elements that make Herman Melville’s Moby Dick such a timeless classic. The story follows the obsessive quest of Captain Ahab to exact revenge on the massive creature that took his leg.
- Kim Brown SeelyInterview
Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Although I was an English major in college, I somehow managed to graduate without reading Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. I’d always imagined it to be this dense tome, so had stupidly avoided it until I began spending a lot of time on the water. I brought it sailing one summer and was…
- Nir EyalInterview
Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris, Mindset by Carol S. Dweck, Moby Dick by Herman Melville are just a few classics.
- Adam WilberInterview
Wow. I would probably give them The Bible, The Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle and then maybe a classic. Perhaps The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain or Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
- Christian B. MillerInterview
I guess it depends on the subject matter. If it is fiction, then my favorite of all time is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Moby Dick by Herman Melville and Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe are right up there too. If is young adult fiction, then it would be The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis or…
- Dean BakerInterview
I loved Moby Dick by Herman Melville, but the book that probably had the greatest impact on me was The Arrogance of Power by J. William Fulbright.
- Paul RussellInterview
The novel I am reading right now is Moby Dick by Herman Melville. It is taking me a shocking amount of time to get through it, as there are many long dry sections about whales and whaling. It is, nevertheless, a genuine classic with interesting themes concerning fate and the battle between humans and nature – so it is…
- George MonbiotInterview
Middlemarch by George Eliot, Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy…
- Ramsey CampbellInterview
That’s an odd one. At sixteen I’d already read quite a few books that helped point my way as a writer – Cry Horror by H.P. Lovecraft (his first British paperback collection, in which I lost myself for an entire day), Night’s Black Agents by Fritz Leiber (which revealed to me the possibilities of the modern urban…
- Luciano FloridiInterview
Too may… but I would like to mention some books that everybody talks about but few actually read: Moby Dick by Herman Melville and Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes, both totally fascinating and in some pages also terribly boring. War and Peace and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, to be read in a single year, without…
- Dale AdcockInterview
Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I must have read it three or four times. It is the greatest book of the imagination and works on so many different levels the more you read it.
- Robin EisenbergInterview
I’d like to read more graphic novels as I’m hoping to start working on my own next year (!!!). I also just bought Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and am planning to read that over the holidays. There are a lot of classics that I’ve never gotten around to and I’d love to read more of them. Love in the Time of Cholera by…
- Jeremy ZuckermanInterview
Ninety-Two in the Shade by Thomas McGuane, Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, The Spike by Damien Broderick, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald, The Soundscape by R. Murray Schafer, The ‘Rama’ series by Arthur C. Clarke, The Rosy…
- Marcus SedgwickInterview
Lots. I love Moby Dick by Herman Melville; it’s another book I can read over and over. I also love Artur Schnitzler’s writing, and in general there are lots of writers from a while back who still feel very modern to me. That’s the kind I like best right now.
- Joseph MazurInterview
Moby Dick by Herman Melville, Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, A Woman in Berlin, Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre, and Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier.
- Francesco GolaInterview
Moby Dick by Herman Melville. A story about the determination to follow our dreams.
- T.I.M. WirkusInterview
Probably Moby-Dick because nobody believes that it’s actually a great read, so they don’t read it, and I keep recommending it, and they keep not reading it, and on and on.
- Pat HarrisInterview
While the Hardy Boys seemed almost real in our house, where I was the youngest of three curious boys, my classmates and I often talked about reading Moby Dick. It was complex and elusive, and reading it would be as much of an adventure as the story itself. One of them read it in the 4th grade, but despite attempts in…
Often recommended alongside
The Bible
The Hobbit
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
War and Peace
Pride and Prejudice
Crime and Punishment
Lolita
Don QuixoteMore books by Herman Melville our guests recommend
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