Billy Budd

Herman Melville's Billy Budd very nearly made it onto my unfinished list. And really, looking back, I don't think that would have been such a bad decision. My first mistake was that I tried to read this at the gym. Melville has not been optimized for elliptical reading. The direct opposite of Hemingway, he uses about 10 words for every 1 he really needs. When nothing has really happened in the first 30 pages of a 100-page book, something is wrong. I gave up trying to read on the run, but felt like I should pick it up again under more studious conditions. After all, it was only 100 pages.

So I finished it. But that's about all I can say. I got lost in the wordiness of it all and never really cared about what was going on. There was a mutiny. On a ship. Billy Budd was framed. Or maybe he did it and was rightly punished. But I think it was the former.

Needless to say, I no longer have any inkling to read Moby Dick. I loved Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener," but now I think we must part ways. Only one book to go on the list! A biography of Jackie Kennedy. Of course I left a thick nonfiction book to the end. And there are lots of words on every page! It will take me a while--I think I will need to intersperse some fiction. It is summer, after all!