# Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

22 Hacker News commenters recommended Moby-Dick by Herman Melville and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a great, stylish and funny classic that rewards patient readers. Critics call it self-indulgent, meandering and tedious in places.

## Why people recommend it

- Great book with rewarding reading (7 comments): "Moby-Dick remains perhaps the best reading experience of my life." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45967274)) "it was doubtless one of the most enjoyable I've read" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48794480)) "part of why it's considered great, not merely good" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48800348))
- Funny and stylish writing (4 comments): "But I really really love Moby Dick. It is so funny!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50168030)) "It hilarious, it's pause encouraging, I love it!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45967616)) "Moby Dick is actually pretty funny." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47957446))
- Digressions into whaling and whale facts (4 comments): "I love how Moby Dick suddenly puts the story on hold and diverges into a chapter dealing with the classification of whales." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48796695)) "the obsession with whales itself, both Ahab’s and the author’s, was maybe more important than the plot" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47957559)) "I loved every bit of it, even the (in)famous chapters about whaling and knot tying" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49097963))
- Central to American literature (4 comments): "if I had to choose one mythic work in American literature that corresponds to Homer, I would choose Herman Melville's 'Moby-Dick'" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48974342)) "I'd rather someone spend a year interrogating Plato or Moby Dick" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46478713)) "I find it hard to look beyond Melville" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48975054))

## What people warn about

- Hard to read or finish (5 comments): "I'm able to process the themes without being subjected to the torture of actually reading it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49906155)) "Many of them were literally unreadable (hello Moby Dick)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46392784)) "could only get halfway through though" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46431336))
- Boring or tedious for long stretches (3 comments): "chapters ~6 through ~85 seem to be extremely boring" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45971600)) "it was all so tedious and utterly, utterly boring" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48674809)) "absolutely boring from start to finish" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166727))
- Too long and self-indulgent (3 comments): "there's a much smaller yet better novel that could be extracted from it. It's just way too self-indulgent and meandering at times." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50170499)) "Moby Dick had a much worse ratio of "size of good novel trying to get out / actual size"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793487)) "both (IMHO) are much longer than they need to be" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792297))
- Disappointing to some readers (2 comments): "I'm not the biggest fan of this actually but it's way better than Gatsby for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46486071)) "I read it a few years ago and was severely disappointed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45977970))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky](https://hackerapproved.com/p/crime-and-punishment.md): 39 recommend
- [The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky](https://hackerapproved.com/p/brothers-karamazov.md): 28 recommend
- [Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace](https://hackerapproved.com/p/infinite-jest.md): 26 recommend
- [The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald](https://hackerapproved.com/p/great-gatsby.md): 24 recommend
- [Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atlas-shrugged.md): 23 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1731702671?tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Bookshop.org](https://bookshop.org/a/130825/9781731702678) (affiliate link)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Moby-Dick by Herman Melville", https://hackerapproved.com/p/moby-dick/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).