Hello and happy Saturday. I finished listening to the audiobook of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, not because I wanted to, but because my seventh-graders have to read this book and if I’m making them do that, then it’s only fair that I do it myself. I started reading it with my eyes, but I gave up on page 17 (of 452) because it would put me to sleep in about eight minutes. My thoughts on this book can be summarized in the following sentence: It was trash that added absolutely nothing to my existence.

Now, I don’t care if you feel that this book is a treasure and that I’m stupid for not seeing that. I have never claimed to be smart or to have good taste in books and I don’t care about what *men* think about me and my taste in books (or anything, really, unless it’s my taste on a *man* that I happen to be *attracted to*). This is a book that shouldn’t be read in 2023, or at least if it does, it should go through a thorough annotation process in which footnotes are added every time the author casually throws a slur to refer to someone who is not white or able-bodied or a christian.

I also was deeply bothered about the animal cruelty aspect, which is central to the plot, since it’s about a bunch of *men* who kill whales for…business? sport? revenge? I didn’t care about that as I was listening and I don’t care to check that now as I’m reviewing this book. I do care about novels that you might consider appropriate and appealing for teenagers so that I can suggest them to my boss. Thanks in advance.