Stuck in the Doldrums with Melville

Big Book Club's "What the Whale!"

In chapters 71-86, no amount of action could keep us from feeling sedated by the seemingly endless chapters on phrenology... Although maybe all of Moby-Dick would improve if read like a jazz poem?

Chapter 79: The Prairie - read like an experimental jazz poem by the Mob-Dick Big Read project

Before Dave Malloy's new musical Moby-Dick makes its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University in December, the American Museum of Natural History will present staged excerpts from the production.

"Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick" by Richard J. King - publication date October 2019

Palate cleansers -

• Jennie - "Cinnamon and Gunpowder: a Novel" by Eli Brown
• Pete - "Midsommar" (Still in theaters) and "Hereditary"
• Megan - Moonrise - The Washington Post’s podcast on the history of the space race, and "Packing for Mars: the Curious Science of Life in the Void" by Mary Roach
• Alex - "Breach" by W.L. Goodwater and the BMA exhibit "Hitching Their Dreams to Untamed Stars: Joyce J. Scott & Elizabeth Talford Scott"

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