I started the Moby Blook project a few months back with ambitious goals — to put the entire text of Moby Dick online in blog form, then read it myself, and report on the reading experience. I stopped at chapter 16 (out of 135). I stopped reading at chapter 6.

So what happened?

It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying the story, or even that I minded reading the book in blog form. Both of these things were going fine. No, my problem was that I’m a bit too much of a perfectionist. Every time I found a formatting problem, I wanted to fix it right away. I couldn’t do the experiment I wanted to do, because proofreading a book is different from reading a book for pleasure.

I’m still thinking I may finish putting the text online. I’ve actually got a .txt file of the book that is completely formatted in proper HTML — all I need to do is cut and paste the file into blog form. The problem is, I won’t be satisfied with that. I’ll want every quotation mark to be properly curled, every em-dash to be correctly spaced. That means I’ll need to proofread the whole thing. Good proofreading means not reading for content, just for form. But then the story will be spoiled for me — even if I go back later and read it for pleasure, the experience won’t be the same as if I had done the reading cold.

If I decide to go forward with the Moby Blook, I’m going to need to change the mission. Since it’s impossible for me to have a good solo reading experience, what I need to strive for is a good group reading experience. Once I get everything online and proofread, I could recruit a few readers to experience the text along with me, and we could try to have a conversation while we read. It won’t be worth it if I can’t find some willing companions, though, and I’m not particularly good at rah-rah recruiting stuff.

So what I’m going to do is just put this message up, and if I can get, say 10 committed readers, then I’ll go ahead with the project, set a deadline for completing the book and a date and timetable for the group reading.

If we can line up the readers, I’ll go forward with the project; if not, I’ll pull the plug and the Moby Blook will be lost to posterity. Let me know if you’re interested in the comments, link to this post early and often, and we’ll see if it’s worth it to proceed. It will be an exciting project if we can get the readers. I’m prepared to do the work to make the blook, but recruiting readers is up to you.

Don’t have time for a long post now; suffice it to say that the Moby Blook has started. Only one chapter (plus “Etymology”) up so far. Some horrendous typos/formatting gaffes which, unfortunately again, I don’t have time to fix just now. It’s not perfect, but it exists. This should be interesting.

The design is getting closer and closer to what I’m looking for. I’ve gotten the sidebar to look pretty good, and even figured out how to automatically generate a table of contents (sort of pointless for a short story). The t of c project really reached the bleeding edge of my programming capabilities — getting it to display in the correct order was a major accomplishment for me. It made me realize why I’m most definitely not a programmer.

In the same vein, the entire book now automatically loads in the proper order (that was accomplished with a kludge before). I think I’ll be able to start posting the actual book sometime next week!

if:book has now given the Moby Blook a little writeup. Ben Vershbow doubts the reading experience will be the equivalent of reading a paper book, but gives it the thumbs’ up as an interactive text project.

I think if all I’ve done with this project is create a nifty way to have a collaborative reading experience, that would be swell, but it’s not what I intended to accomplish at all. The goal is to have a reading experience that is as satisfying reading a physical book — or possibly more so. I want to demonstrate that an online interface need not merely mimic the printed text, and that the printed interface is not necessarily the ideal way to present a narrative text.

The experiment is by necessity a personal one. If others join me for the ride, that will be great, but for me the key thing is developing my own way of grappling with a significant text.

The design for the Moby Blook is beginning to take shape. It doesn’t quite work for a short story, though: the little running headers at the top of each page now just repeat the title of the story, but in a novel they’ll give chapter numbers and titles. The first page in each chapter will have a big heading, like the first post in the Bartleby Blog. Make sense?

I’m still seeking volunteers to turn my whale white. Also, obviously the navigation area in the right hand column will have to improve, and I’ll need to do something about the situation that occurs when the browser window is stretched wider than 800 pixels.

There’s been a good deal of confusion in the comments about the purpose of the Moby Blook, probably mostly because I have a better idea in my head of what this is all about than I’ve ever expressed here.

Let me see if I can lay out my thinking about the blook in a little more organized fashion. I’ve spent a lot of time here at Word Munger musing about e-books. I’ve suggested that the computer monitor doesn’t quite have the resolution necessary, that computers aren’t portable enough, that most of the portable devices so far devised to present e-books have serious interface problems.

Then it hit me: I probably spend at least 2 or 3 hours a day reading blogs, on the very same computer monitor I’m complaining about so ceaselessly. Blogs have solved many of the navigation problems that plague, say, PDF readers. So why not use a blog format to present an e-book?

Several commenters have pointed out that blogs are already being used to host books, most notably the Samuel Pepys Diary and Dracula. Though these are admirable efforts, they still are basically just applying twenty-first-century technology to an ancient tradition: the journal format.

What I’m trying to do is somewhat different — I’m conducting an experiment to see if the blog form can be easily adapted by someone with rather modest technical and design skills (me!) into a superior interface for navigating e-books. And not just journals, but any book designed to be read from front to back (or in any other order).

I’m not attempting to create the definitive Moby Dick e-text, or any sort of concordance to the book, but just seeing if I can create a simple but usable interface for grappling with a serious text.

Some side benefits of the project could be that others will read the blook along with me, and add their own comments alongside my own. Another potential benefit might be the development of a teaching tool: I could distribute a “clean” copy of the blook, when complete, so teachers could use it in class and have an untrammeled forum for their students to comment on and discuss.

But mainly I want to develop a template that anyone could use to create their own blooks, for any number of possible uses. Any other ideas?

How’s this for a header?

I know, I know, the whale is black, but I kinda like it.

Still working on the design for the Moby Dick project, still using “Bartleby” as my sample text.

Today I worked on generating a format for the page headers. Each “page” corresponds to a blog entry, and offers about 3 screens’ worth of text. This unit was chosen arbitrarily, to allow frequent commenting, and simply to break up the text. I’m still not completely satisfied with the page headers in terms of color or font, but the orientation of the text is correct.

In the finished book, chapter titles will replace the story title in the heading for each page. This will serve the same function a running head does in a printed book. I’m not fully decided on how to handle chapter titles. I think I’m going to make them their own separate level of heading, underneath the page headers. That will have to be tomorrow’s project; I’ve run out of time for today.

I chose Baskerville for the main text font. If you don’t have Baskerville on your computer, it should be replaced with Times or Times New Roman.

Obviously, there’s still a lot of work to do: creating the navigation and links section in the toolbar to the right; making a masthead, and trying some other things that will make this thing “feel” more like a book. However, the text design will really comprise the bulk of the work. Flowing the text of the book into the completed design form should go quite quickly.

Feedback, as always, is welcome.

I’ve now created a new Moby Dick Blook. You can check out the link to see how it’s going, but right now there isn’t much there: just the standard WordPress entry-level blog. I’ll be customizing it in my spare time over the next couple of weeks. Feel free to take a peek whenever you want, and use the comments to let me know about features you’d like to see, complain about the design, or whatever.

Next, I’m going to create a text design using Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener.” I’m going to do this because I’d like to get feedback on the design of the blook before I actually create the real blook. I want to experience Moby Dick along with the other readers; I don’t want to conflate the reading experience with the design experience. Remember, the purpose of this project is to see if I can create an e-text that is as satisfying to read and “grapple with” as a standard text.

So, I’m hoping that by using “Bartleby” as my text-design template, I can create a design that is appropriate to Melville. It will probably be a bit weird, however, because I’m thinking about using a whale motif (very tastefully done, of course). Come to think of it, “Bartleby the Whaler” does have a bit of a ring to it…

Update: Bartleby is up now. Looks absolutely appalling, but we’ll get to improving it soon enough. Suggestions are welcome!

I’m very nearly settled on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick for my proposed blook project.

Why Moby Dick? Well, first off, I like Melville — what little I’ve read of him. I thought “Bartleby, The Scrivener” was an amazing read: both the imagery and the fantastic nature of the story make it truly brilliant work.

Second, it’s ambitious. Why settle for a wimpy little text like Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist when I can tackle a 200,000-word monstrosity like Moby Dick?

Third, it’s “important.” Probably the most “significant” book I’ve never read, or at least the most significant American book I’ve never read.

Fourth, it’s bloggable. It’s got lots of little chapters, and relatively short paragraphs, both of which lend themselves to the blog format.

However, there are some serious issues with Moby Dick as well. It’s by a dead white guy. The dead part can’t really be helped, since I need to do an out-of-copyright text. White and guy are more serious issues. Why should the first blook reinforce the hegemony of the Man? I don’t have a good answer for that one, though at least during his lifetime it is true that, like many women and people of color, Melville was certainly underappreciated. Melville never was the Man, at least while he was alive.

I’m sure there are other reasons not to do Moby Dick, but the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s the book I’d really like to turn into a blook. You can try to talk me out of it (as my wife already has), but I’m going to be hard to convince.

P.S. I think I’ve solved the technical issues w/r/t using blogging software to make a blook. The only things standing between me and getting this done will be creating a decent design, and finding the time. I’ll keep you posted on the blook’s progress.