Books Like Moby Dick

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William Hootkins narrates Moby Dick with a sonorous, unhurried gravity that transforms Melville's infamous digressions — the whale anatomy chapters, the philosophy of whiteness, the rope-splicing — from obstacles into atmosphere, the kind of slow current you stop fighting and start floating in. At nearly 25 hours, the runtime isn't excess; it's the whole argument, and the fact that readers rate this nearly a full point higher than readers do suggests the spoken word is simply the form the book was always waiting for. The books here share that same appetite for scale — most run close to 25 hours — and the ones that have earned the most devotion, including a Pulitzer winner among them, are precisely the kind that ask something of you and pay it back with interest.

10 books for fans of Moby Dick

  1. 1
    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire cover

    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

    Harry Potter • Book 4

    by J.K. Rowling

    ★ 4.57 Goodreads (4.2M ratings)
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  2. 2
    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix cover

    Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

    Harry Potter • Book 5

    by J.K. Rowling, Mary GrandPré

    ★ 4.50 Goodreads (3.8M ratings)
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  3. 3
    Demon Copperhead cover

    Demon Copperhead

    by Barbara Kingsolver

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    Kingsolver transposes David Copperfield to modern Appalachia, following Demon through foster care, addiction, and systemic poverty. A Pulitzer-winning portrait of America's forgotten communities.

    ★ 4.46 Goodreads (824.6K ratings)
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  4. 4
    East of Eden cover

    East of Eden

    by John Steinbeck

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    Steinbeck retells Cain and Abel through generations of California families, exploring how the capacity for both good and evil passes through bloodlines in the Salinas Valley.

    ★ 4.44 Goodreads (655.0K ratings)
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  5. 5
    Cutting for Stone cover

    Cutting for Stone

    by Abraham Verghese

    ★ 4.34 Goodreads (431.3K ratings)
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  6. 6
    [Demons] [By: Dostoyevsky, Fyodor] [September, 1994] cover

    [Demons] [By: Dostoyevsky, Fyodor] [September, 1994]

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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    Dostoyevsky's prophetic novel follows Russian revolutionaries whose ideological extremism leads them to consider murdering their own comrades to protect their cause.

    ★ 4.31 Goodreads (64.3K ratings)
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  7. 7
    Hemingway cover

    Hemingway

    by Nate Cleveland

    ★ 5.00 Goodreads (2 ratings)
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  8. 8
    The Brothers K cover

    The Brothers K

    by David James Duncan

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    The Chance family fractures over Vietnam, religion, and baseball in this sprawling American epic that follows four brothers through the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and beyond.

    ★ 4.39 Goodreads (17.1K ratings)
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  9. 9
    Crime and Punishment cover

    Crime and Punishment

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky

    ★ 4.29 Goodreads (1.1M ratings)
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  10. 10
    Crime and Punishment cover

    Crime and Punishment

    by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Constance Garnett - translator

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    After killing an old woman for her money, Raskolnikov finds that escaping punishment means nothing if you cannot escape the weight of your own conscience.

    ★ 4.29 Goodreads (1.1M ratings)
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