I probably started Moby Dick a half-dozen times before I got past the 30th page. When I finally did read it, I was glad that I did. It's easily one of the best American novels ever written. Like a lot of readers, I struggled reading the long and descriptive passages related to the anatomy of whales, etc., but Melville's knowledge of whales and the whaling industry is impressive. It's probably not true, but I read somewhere that Melville purposefully made those passages tedious and boring to give the reader an idea of what it was like to be stuck at sea for months on end.