But now I will tell the lineage and the names of the heroes, and of the long sea-paths and the deeds

Re: Moby Dick,
I'll probably write something similar to this in my next monthly recap, but here's where I'm at on it:
I still love it. I still think it's very funny.
After an initial burst of reading, I've been reading it slowly. My friend Ben made fun of me, teasing me that I was just avoiding it because I don't really like it. But nah, that's not true. I'm reading it slowly because I really, really love it. I savor every chapter, often re-reading all or some of it right after finishing it. Often reading a bit out loud to my wife or sending sentences via text to friends.
I'm reading slowly because I don't want this new-to-me experience to end. I want there to always be more new Moby Dick for me to read.
And, if I'm being completely honest, I'm also reading slowly because I'm afraid. I'm afraid that at some point this joyous romp of a novel that I'm reading is going to turn into some serious slog. Why else does this novel have the reputation it has? How am I the only one that understands how much fun this is? I'm afraid that maybe the tone shifts and by the end, all that anyone can remember is devastating existential despair. Maybe.
But, yeah, I'm still loving it, and right now I would (and have been) recommending it to everyone.

I mean, On the Waterfront [1954] was different, because that became, in terms of behaviour, the way I understood people around me. My world. But noir, the tone of it, and the locations, not simply The Naked City [Jules Dassin, 1948]. You go to Night and the City [Dassin, 1950], for example, it takes place in London, but that is the story: a man running in the middle of the night, in a double-breasted suit, owing money, to somebody. A loser. No happy ending in that one. This guy is doomed. And I saw it, I saw it happen. It’s all gone now, they’re all dead now, but it just was…When people say, ‘Oh, melodrama’ – well, yeah, but it was happening. It was the reality around us.

Some innocent educationalists and philanthropists (for even philanthropists can be innocent) have expressed a grave astonishment that the masses prefer shilling shockers to scientific treatises and melodramas to problem plays. The reason is very simple. The realistic story is certainly more artistic than the melodramatic story. If what you desire is deft handling, delicate proportions, a unit of artistic atmosphere, the realistic story has a full advantage over the melodrama. In everything that is light and bright and ornamental the realistic story has a full advantage over the melodrama. But, at least, the melodrama has one indisputable advantage over the realistic story. The melodrama is much more like life. It is much more like man, and especially the poor man.

Many of the elements that define cinema as I know it are there in Marvel pictures. What’s not there is revelation, mystery or genuine emotional danger. Nothing is at risk. The pictures are made to satisfy a specific set of demands, and they are designed as variations on a finite number of themes.

Give us adequate images. We, we lack adequate images, our civilization doesn't have adequate images. And I think our civilization is doomed, is gonna die out like dinosaurs if it does not develop an adequate language or adequate images.