I’ve had similar issues, largely because of my job – i work from home, tech stuff, and my work life & real life have gotten perhaps too intertwined because off-hours work is pretty routine for this field. So i try to read and my brain starts wandering, thinking about work i need to finish up, or my non-work to-do list that gets longer & longer, so on and so forth.
So a little while back i decided to take control of the situation, and carve out some time as often as possible just for reading, which means closing the door to my office, putting on some calming background music, and giving myself an hour at least where i can just set aside everything else for a while. It’s not easy! But with practice i’m getting better at it. I do miss those younger days when i had entire days to just sit and read, of course. But i’m trying to make this private time a real priority.
Yes! I’m about 2/3 of the way into it and have had very similar reactions. Sometimes i do find myself thinking “come on Ishmael, get to the damn point already” but most of the time his rambling digressions are quite amusing. The descriptive language is just stunning in some chapters (i’m thinking of the ghostly whale spout they spot at night which seems to be leading them on, and things like that). Of course, from a 21st-century perspective some of it makes one cringe – like the chapter where Stubb is harassing the ship’s old cook, Fleece. But even there, with the awful “yas suh, Massa Stubb” dialect, Melville clearly sympathizes with Fleece and characterizes Stubb as a racist a–hole. Overall the book is much wilder and more free-wheeling and “modern-feeling” than i’d expected.