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Feb 03, 2010

Victoria rated it:

Like most people, I have loved whales since I was a kid (though I have always been more fascinated by sharks...). This book's title, however, was a bit misleading... there were a lot of fascinating facts about whales, but it was honestly more about whaling than the whales themselves. Which made it a pretty depressing (albeit very interesting) read, all in all. And throughout, the book constantly referenced Moby-Dick, and the life of Herman Melville. So, if you are very familiar with that piece o More...

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Mar 08, 2010

Grace rated it:

I didn't realise I was so interested in whales! Well, perhaps I'm not but the brilliance of this book is such that it doesn't matter. It's a very engaging read and full of lovely illustrations. In fact, you get the impression the publishers were surprisingly supportive of what sounds like a slightly leftfield book (400 pages of why I'm interested in whales, the history of commercial whaling and Moby Dick) - they haven't crammed the text in and there are plenty of pictures (black and white). Howe More...

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Feb 17, 2011

Jennifer rated it:

I don't know if I can finish this book. In the early pages the author wrote "I was ready to believe in whales" and I shut the book in anger. Now whenever I'm about to pick it up I remember, "I was ready to believe in whales" and start muttering crankily to myself something like the following "the fuck? ready to believe in whales? they exist. you don't believe in fucking whales. ready to fucking believe in whales? fuck this. tv time". so....i don't know if i More...

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Aug 23, 2010

Kerfe rated it:

"It was shockingly strange."

I wish I had read this before reading "Moby Dick" instead of after. Hoare uses Melville's book as a touchpoint for his musings on whales and whaling, and his insights give a valuable counterpoint to the novel. I definitely would have absorbed more from from both Melville's factual and imaginative digressions, and I think it would also have enhanced for me the book's broader vision.

The sheer destructiveness, wastefulness, a More...

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Mar 25, 2010

Nicholas rated it:

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1408980.html

A good historical and literary survey of whaling: Hoare chases down all sorts of information about whales and their exploitation by humans; I had forgotten just how bad things had got in the 1970s before the whaling ban came into force (as far as it did); but it's also amazing just how little is known about whales, because of the difficulty of carrying out direct research on them. Hoare also reflects on Herman Melville and the composition of hi More...

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Jun 03, 2011

J.D. rated it:

So, I have to preface this with the information that ever since I can remember I've been obsessed with the natural world. Recently my focus has been whales. I based an entire holiday around it (see more of my adventure here)and I wrote a novel of my own all about them (The Water Book.)
Given all of this, I was predisposed to love Leviathan. If you have any kind of magpie mind you'll find something to spark your interest here. It's crammed with astonishing facts about beasts that are already More...

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Mar 26, 2011

Andrew rated it:

This book is the eloquently written biography of the whale, told from the perspective of an individual who is on a journey of discovery to satisfy his passionate desire for knowledge of these magnificent creatures. It is a richly woven tapestry which is part historical, party biographical and autobiographical and part zoology. The prose used is magnificently written and there is a real sense of connection, not only with the creatures which form the main subject of the book, but also with the aut More...

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Mar 27, 2011

Donovan added it

A trans-Atlantic journey through the natural history and literary history of the whale. Like Melville's Ishmael, Hoare swims through libraries and sails over oceans. Unlike Ishmael, he also goes swimming with whales, not just any whales either, Folio whales. Along the way he reveals how our confused thinking about and knowledge of this most charismatic and mythic of marine mammals has changed in the last century and a half. We now know, for instance, that Melville was wrong about the great sperm More...

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Apr 11, 2010

Magda rated it:

They are Linnæan-classified aliens following invisible magnetic fields, seeing through sound and hearing through their bodies, moving through a world we know nothing about. They are animals before the Fall, innocent of sin.

As with everything in whaling, periods of frenetic energy alternated with soporific inaction or numbing drudgery. Time itself was different at sea. Far from land, the levelling ocean flattened out the days to be recreated in nautical dispensations, reordered from n More...

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May 06, 2011

bay reads books rated it:

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Oct 27, 2011

Virginia rated it:

Let me tell you, I was SO glad that I had previously read Moby-Dick or, The Whale and was relatively familiar with it before reading this book. This is really the author’s paean to Herman Melville, who he seems to have a bit of a crush on. I personally think Herman Melville was a little weird, so I was not totally thrilled with the deviation from whales to whalers, BUT the author’s unbridled enthusiasm for the topic carried the book.

I did have to fight the urge to gently remind t More...

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Jan 04, 2011

James rated it:

This is probably one of the most best reads I've had in a long time. I felt dedicated to this book while reading it. Philip Hoare is a enthusiastic, hugely knowledgeable author who writes movingly and poetically about his own love of whales and their place in both their own and human history. This book is fascinating, with so many tales, whether they are from anecdotes, old scientific papers, literature or modern research studies.
Hoare's look at the history of whaling is especially good, hi More...

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Apr 06, 2010

Bookmarks Magazine rated it:

Hoare's obsession with whales results in a fascinating exploration of the whale's role in literature, history, travel, science, and society. In his attempt to understand the whale's ""mysterious narrative power,"" Hoare uses Moby-Dick as his touchstone, but he explores other writers' perceptions and descriptions of whales as well. He is a fascinating, quirky, compelling writer, but The Whale, though filled with scientific fact, will likely interest more literary types. A few More...

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May 14, 2010

David rated it:

Outstanding book by Philip Hoare which walks in the footsteps of Herman Melville while writing Moby Dick, and a general history of whaling, with fascinating sidetrips. People have been whaling for a very long time, but the commercial-type whaling only dates from around the eighteenth century. Hoare goes all around the world tracing the development of whaling, the birth of the International Whaling Commission, (and the birth of the environmental movement) types of whaling and the creation of th More...

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Feb 27, 2010

Mungomomo rated it:

This book had moments of brilliance; the second half definitely picked up compared to the first. The problem lies in the fact that I'm not interested in the history of Moby Dick or Herman Melville. (Although, the relationship between Melville and Hawthorne is... interesting to say the least.) But when the book got to the horrors of commercial whaling and whale captivity, I could not put it down. Terrible stuff & very eye opening. There is a lot of interesting information scattered throughou More...

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Dec 26, 2011

Jaime rated it:

Two things kept this from a five-star rating -- footnotes would have been a blessing (both for fact-checking purposes and further learning purposes), and even I (a person who can get misty-eyed over the beauty of orange peels) found Hoare's sentimentality to be a little indulgent. He borders, at times, on mysticism, but if you can get past those moments, they don't detract from the intellectual spirit of the book. This is a natural history, a personal history, and a cultural history -- a whirlwi More...

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Dec 26, 2011

Rhett rated it:

On the one hand, Philip Hoare is into Moby-Dick, and does a good deal of meditation on the greatest literary achievement of this hemisphere. I tip my hat to him for his excellent reading.

On the other, I feel more sympathy with Ishmael's virile lust for blood than Hoare's reproach of man for hunting the whale nearly to extinction. I don't know how to express it without sounding like Ernest Hemingway or José Ortega y Gasset, but it seems to me an equal expression of my humanity to kil More...

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Sep 27, 2010

Sam rated it:

This is an absolutely superb book, it covers pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about whales and man's relationship with them and the roles they have played not just in the world of business but also in that of politics and literature . Hoare has an obvious passion for whales and this comes through in his writing, which is descriptive and engrossing, even during the whaling scenes when you want to look away but can't. Melville's Moby Dick obviously appears a lot in this book, as qu More...

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Apr 07, 2011

Tom rated it:

It's hard to know exactly what the aims of the author were with this book. Is it a travelogue, a journey through the authors eyes in the footsteps of Herman Melville, in a similar light to the excellent writing of Tony Horwitz, is it an literary exploration of Moby Dick, or is it simply an exploration of whaling and the whale. I'm not sure the author knows, and is desperately hoping that if he writes in emulation of what was the new and unique voice used in Moby Dick, perhaps you won't notice. More...

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Aug 03, 2010

Leilani rated it:

My impression of this book: Some introspective thoughts about the author's childhood. Here's a really cool whale! Here's how Americans hunted it & boiled its flesh on their whaling boats. Some stuff about Melville & Moby Dick. Here's another cool whale! Here's how the British killed it and used its bones for buildings. Descriptions of 20th century industrial whaling & explosive harpoons. And then a few chapters at the end which describe whales themselves. This book is woefully badly described on More...

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Sep 16, 2011

Anna rated it:

WOW. The WHALE. Or, "Ah, the world, oh the whale."

Philip Hoare is a passionate storyteller and ridiculously engaging. Part memoir, part history, part travelogue, part natural history, part literary criticism (for all you lovers of Moby Dick!)--this is the kind of nonfiction I go for.

But, careful--this is not a beach read. What we have done to the whales is painful, and while I read and thought about this enormous and mysterious animal of the deep, I also had a More...

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Mar 23, 2011

Caroline rated it:

This isn't my usual kind of reading - as much as I like whales I wouldn't say I was so fascinated by them as to want to read an entire book on them - and yet this had me spellbound. Philip Hoare has a wonderful, poetic way of writing, and his own love for and fascination with whales come over with every word. This isn't just a scientific book about whales; it's an exploration of the whale in human history, religion, literature. He talks about Melville's Moby-Dick as much as whaling and the whale More...

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Jul 13, 2011

Tom rated it:

This book spent a bit more time dissecting Moby Dick and Melville's life than I expected, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, although it was a curveball. Otherwise, it was pretty fascinating, at least if, like me, you have any interest in whales/the sea at all. Like many contemporary books that hone in one a specific subject, sometimes it goes too far in trying to prove that *this subject* is the most important one in world history (ie- whales are at the heart of everything), but most of th More...

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Dec 14, 2010

Anne rated it:

I love whales and will read pretty much anything about them, but my love for the subject matter is just about the only reason I could even give this one two stars. I noticed a rather large number of typos/grammatical errors, as well as many many places where a good copy-editor should have fixed syntax and sentence structure. I can appreciate Hoare's interest in the history of whaling, but his explanations jump around and are not always clear - without a prior understanding of the subject matte More...

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Apr 25, 2010

Kevin rated it:

First, let me say that this book should probably mention Moby Dick in the title, as nearly half of the book is about Melville's white whale. Now, I don't have any problem with reading about Moby Dick, but the focus on that book made this one a little uneven. At times I felt like I was reading a comp lit dissertation. At other times it is sort of a natural history and at others it is a bit of a travelogue. Occasionally there is a really interesting fact or tidbit, or a nice bit of writing that ca More...

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Jul 08, 2011

Audrey rated it:

Philip Hoare walks a fine line in this book between natural history and personal narrative, with a big dose of Melville and Moby Dick. I wanted a few more scientific details now and then, but overall, I really enjoyed his ruminations on whales, and our relationship with whales. He examines how they live in our imaginings and stories since they're so elusive in real life, and how we built an entire economy on them, up to how they're doing now in an (almost) post-whaling age. My own whale watching More...

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Oct 01, 2010

Kate rated it:

Irksome (to me) verbal flourishes! I recant my statement that the prose is elegant: it's excessive and pompous. Example: at Melville's grave, the author notes: "Next to him lies Elizabeth, keeping her silence as always." I found this-- and many, many other instances-- offputting. Skimmed rapidly to the end, found occasionally interesting facts, but now I'm DONE and I'm glad.

I learned much more about whalers and whaling-- in a much more direct and accessible style-- from Nat More...

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Jul 27, 2011

Iain added it

Excellent. It's a meandering cultural history book about whales, their place in the human imagination, as well as in economic development. Plenty of fascinating stuff on whaling, lots on what Melville was up to when he wrote Moby-Dick, and the detours down odd byways that are becoming Hoare's stock in trade. This bloke also wrote a great book called England's Lost Eden about nutty Victorian religious sects. His approach is rightly compared to W G Sebald although his tone is lighter and I fin More...

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Jul 31, 2010

Beth rated it:

In 6th grade, I watched the mini-series the Voyage of the Mimi in class, and promptly developed a crush on a young Ben Affleck and a longing to go to sea. I began my college career as a marine biology major, and clung to it until I was done in by calculus and the prospect of Organic Chemistry. I read Moby Dick in my junior year of college, and still regret not doing a semester at sea before changing my major to humanities. Reading The Whale brought back fond memories of the paper I wrote on Moby More...

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Aug 24, 2010

Marianne rated it:

My sister got me this for my birthday because I love whales so much and it was a perfect gift. "The Whale" is worth owning just for the beautiful cover, but is a fairly amazing book. It's a fairly hefty read for someone like me. Quite scholarly, interspersed with some genuinely entertaining personal stories, and even poetic in some parts.

But...the whales...the whales. They are the reason this is a 4 star read. The author goes to great lengths to explain the history of More...

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