Moby-Dick: or, The Whale

This is the only book I've ever read that I think I might actually have been better with an abridgement. The story is great and the language is beautiful, but over the course of the story, too much attention is given to supplemental chapters about technical details and historical information about whaling in general. While it may be interesting to some, many of these chapters add nothing to the story of Ishmael's adventures on the Pequod.