2019 marks the bicentennial of Herman Melville’s birth. For lit lovers, reaction to this news will depend almost entirely on their feelings about just one of his novels: Moby-Dick.

Moby-Dick is one of those novels that, let’s face it, many readers avoid or abandon. For those readers, mere mention of the novel may trigger anxiety that looms like its namesake: an intimidating, inscrutable monster.

If Melville’s 200th spurs you to take on the tale of the great white whale, English Professor Martha Elena Rojas has a few suggestions:

Pick a version that works for you.

In addition to the familiar editions you might remember, there are Moby-Dick picture and pop-up books for children, and graphic novels for young adults. A favorite of Rojas’ is Matt Kish’s monograph Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page. The book is 600 pages long with a shipping weight of 4.3 pounds. Melville would be proud.

Commit to reading the first 50 pages.

“Even if you read only one chapter, you will take something from it,” Rojas says. “I think of the first chapters as Melville’s long ramp into it, his way of drawing you into the text. Ishmael’s perspective as a somewhat experienced sailor who nonetheless ventures into unknown territory is much like the reader’s, and the friendship that unfolds between Ishmael and Queequeg models a positive encounter with the new and unfamiliar.”

Begin at the end.

If you get really impatient, stop and read the last three chapters. “Most people already know the plot of Moby-Dick, so that’s one of its challenges: We think we already know it,” Rojas says. “So read the end first, and then pick up the book again to experience how Melville gets us there.”

Listen to the audio.

On the website Moby-Dick Big Read, each chapter is read by a different person. Actor Tilda Swinton reads the opening chapter. Beloved poet Mary Oliver, who died in January, reads the epilogue. In between, you hear the voices of Royal Shakespeare Company actors. The novel with its scenes of sailors telling yarns and tall tales, of sermons, speeches, and soliloquies is inherently theatrical.

Get in the mood.

Tracks from Laurie Anderson’s multimedia translation, “Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick” appear on her album Life on a String. “I’m partial to ‘The Island Where I Come From,’ with its strains of calypso, and the haunting, poetic ‘Pieces and Parts,’” says Rojas.

Set aside time, but not too much.

The key to success, Rojas says, is setting aside time specifically for the purpose of reading. In the classroom, she gives her undergraduates three weeks. “Two weeks is not enough and four is too much,” she says.

Be ready to be rewarded.

National Book Award-winner Nathaniel Philbrick argues in Why Read Moby-Dick that the novel is “as close to being our American Bible as we have.” It’s also a great read, says Rojas. “And Moby-Dick has proliferated and permeated modern culture. There are plays, movies, paintings, operas, even rap songs devoted to it.”

—Marybeth Reilly-McGreen