Why? Surely you agree that different people have different tastes. I couldn't get through the first chapter of Infinite Jest, but I don't think people who say they love the book are being insincere. There are large numbers of people who would find the tech jobs that many people on this site enjoy to be incredibly tedious and boring.
Why cant a book be a slog and be loved? Being somewhat painful to get through is the price of admission for most classic works. Even the most diehard David Foster Wallace fan wouldn't challenge someone who said Infinite Jest was a slog to get through.
Thanks for putting this more eloquently than I could. This is an important point that I didn't state. There are passages in Moby Dick that are indeed beautiful, but the first thing I think of when I hear Moby Dick is how painful it is to read.
Because I read it and it was a slog. There are large portions of the book that are unrelated to the story and are painful to get through. But saying that makes you look dumb, whereas asserting how much you love it makes you look like a fabulously cultured and intelligent connoisseur of high literature. Whatever, though.
I think you should consider the possibility that other people sincerely like this book, even the portions you found tedious, and aren't just pretending in order to show off their culture and intelligence. What does 'zabzonk' have to gain from proving his culture and intelligence to 'yuuu' and 'allturtles'?
I didn't really care for the story itself that much, I was more fascinated by the whaling culture and the glimpse it provided of the views of that time and place, along with its fantastic writing. Which is why for me it wasn't a slog at all.
If you're looking for something shorter and more readable about whaling, I'd recommend In the Heart of the Sea. The (nonfiction) story told there was used by Melville as inspiration for Moby Dick. Unlike Moby Dick, that was a book I could not put down, but my brain is also the size of a peanut.
I think a lot of it comes down to how you read it.
I usually read a book in a couple of sittings. This favors lighter fare, with copious excitement to keep one engaged.
I could never do this with Moby Dick. But with a 10-30 page reading per day, you hear about some interesting thing: perhaps mostly whaling and sailing, perhaps advancing the plot and characters. It's not enough to sustain an excited big read, but it's certainly enough to make you wonder about what you'll read next.
The chapters average 3-4 pages long. I think this is a hint that it's intended to be consumed in morsels.
It's not a slog. On the contrary, it is perhaps the ideal book for reading while sitting on the loo, or whilst having a bath. The chapters are mostly short, and typically cover different aspects of characters, plot, and other stuff, and are easy to read. Once you have read it through once to get an idea of the plot, you can just dip into at random, or re-read favourite bits. I used to keep my paperback copy in the bathroom.
Whether a book is enjoyable or not depends at least as much on who reads the book as on the book.
When I was a child, I have read Moby Dick and I have enjoyed every part of it very much, including the so-called boring parts about the history of whaling and so on.
At that age most of what was described in the book were new things for me, so they were interesting.
Half a century later, I would never have patience to read any similar book, as it is extremely unlikely that any such book could contain anything that I have not read before.
