re: Reading Moby-Dick for 25 hours straight
I never found Moby Dick a particularly difficult read, although to say Melville digresses during the book would be a spectacular understatement. The story was good, had a decent plot, and the characterizations were excellent.
Was fun reading a review of Pynchon's "Against the Day," where the Chronicle reviewer was breaking his spine into fragments trying to justify it as a work of genius in spite of being almost unreadable.
Someday I'm going to see one of these reviewers jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, his last words being "Yeah, I know it's bloody Pynchon, but it SUCKS!"