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Ok,
So here is a nomination. This is a pretty long book, but you should be able to read it in a month. It is one of the Penguin Ten Essential Classics and many references in life and literature come from this book. It is a book I started reading when I was young and couldn't commit to it. I think a famous coffee chain got its name from this book:
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
This is not a book about fishing.
In the novel, published in 1851 after sixteen months of writing, Herman Melville recounts the Promethean quest of Captain Ahab, who, having lost a leg in a earlier battle with White Whale, is determined to catch the beast and destroy it. By the time readers meet Ahab, he is a vengeful, crazed, and terror-provoking figure, for Moby-Dick has come to represent for him all the evil in the world. The relentless voyage of Ahab and his crew, a finely etched group of weird and wonderful characters who seem both flesh-and-blood individuals and symbolic of the varying qualities of men, becomes a masterful drama of life at sea. The drama is made more fascinating by Melville's eloquent style--a combination of the journalistic, colloquial, and poetic--and the themes and subjects he pursues--whales and whaling; man's need for love and comradeship; and the fury of Ahab for the whale. Through realistic storytelling, symbolic allegory, and allusive and figurative language, Melville achieves in Moby-Dick a special intensity that readers will marvel at, and not soon forget.
BOb
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