No. 316 - Leviathan

I posted on my Facebook wall this morning to "call me Ishmael for the next week or so. I just started Moby-Dick." A high school friend replied, "I was thinking of reading that myself, I was just listening to Mastodon's Leviathan album yesterday which is based on Moby Dick."

Let me first say something about the time leading up to reading this book. As I posted two days ago, I set a goal at the beginning of the year to read it. But I was not looking forward to it. Why? Well, for one it's a classic, and I have read some of the classics and don't always agree they are the "best books" ever written. And it's a rather lengthy novel. So if it's not that good, it would be quite a task to finish it. And how could I say that I once started and did not finish Moby-Dick?

So I just read other books, and let it sit on my shelf. But then the year began to slip away, and I realized that I needed to do something, or fail at my goal.

Over the last month  I researched what others had to say about the book, talked about it with my family, and posted about it twice, once in Post No. 285 and again in Post No. 314. I learned some cool things along the way. Like the coffee chain, Starbucks, was almost named Pequod after the whaling ship in Moby-Dick. But one of the co-founders rejected the idea. So instead they named it after Starbuck, the young first mate of the Pequod.

I think I psyched myself into wanting to read it. Kind of like how you psyche yourself up before a big game.

I used to listen to lots of heavy metal in high school. Not so much today. But I still appreciate it. I had not heard of  Mastodon, who is a metal band from Atlanta, Georgia formed in 1999. They released Leviathan in 2004. The album is loosely based on Moby-Dick with songs like "Iron Tusk", "Blood and Thunder", "I Am Ahab" and "Seabeast."

I am really glad to have learned about Leviathan just as I am beginning the novel and will certainly be listening to it while enjoying Melville's classic.