Other Fiction Melville, Herman: Moby Dick. v1. 20Jan2011

[Strether]

This novel was one of my reading goals for this year, but looking at the free ebook copies of the novel that are available on the web and being to some extent dissatisfied with all of them, I've formatted my own version, and taken some pains with it.

After the book was published, Melville corrected a dozen or so errors in the novel and added a new footnote. These have all been incorporated in this version.

Jim

2/11/11--This new version supports waypoints as well as the page numbering system for Kindle 3 readers.

The previous version was downloaded 101 times.

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.

[lyric]

Thanks. This is excellent.
I processed the file through Calibre and Kindle now recognizes the chapter breaks. Should I post the processed version here?

[Strether]

I'd prefer that you didn't. I purposely left it unprocessed by Calibre because when you put it through Calibre, any paragraph that begins with an italicized word or one in bold print, will have an indentation that will be different from ordinary paragraphs. If the chapter dots are more important to you than how it looks, by all means run it through Calibre for your own use. I do that myself with some sci-fi books which I know I'm going to re-read, but which I also know will contain battle scenes I'd just as soon skip.

I'm assuming that when you say it now recognizes chapter breaks, you are talking about the chapter dots that appear in the reading progess bar. Prospective readers should know that the beginning of each chapter does begin on its own page and is reachable by a linked toc.

Thanks for the compliment, by the way. It took a while to do.

Jim

[lyric]

Yes - i meant the chapter dots. I suspect that one could fix this indentation problem by editing the HTML directly, but I hadn't noticed it. Others, who want the chapter dots can simply do the same as I did.

I'm impressed by the hard work you've put into this.

[Strether]

Well, I'll readily admit that I'm not an expert in these things, but if you look at the HTML version with a text editor, you don't see anything different about those italicized lines than any of the others. I did put in a bug notice to Kovid and in a couple of weeks, it'll be a year old. Either the problem is intractable or so insignificant that it's not worth the time of the Calibre developers to bother with, take your pick. Too bad, too, because it's often convenient to have those chapter dots to facilitate movement through the book. But I'd worked so hard to make sure this book was as good as I could get it, I didn't have the heart to mess it up by running it through Calibre.

Jim

[Strether]

Many thanks are due to Mobileread member Idolse for identifying the problem on identations of italicized paragraphs when running a book through Calibre. As a consequence, that no longer is an issue and the new version I've posted today provides waypoints as well as page numbers for the Kindle 3 reader.

Jim

[lyric]

Hi Strether,
I just completed Moby Dick - fantastic book! And beautiful formatting. Thank you so much for your effort.

I noticed no typos whatsoever. A first for an ebook! ;-)

[Strether]

No typos = A Miracle! I do appreciate the kind words.

If you haven't already done so, you might read the chapter on Moby Dick in D.H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature. A very individual point of view, but he was an admirer.

Jim