That is not a thing that tends to bother me, if the telling is also interesting. But yeah, I could see thinking that. Things happen, but there is also a lot of exposition and digression and "and here's what happened in the year that we will now pass".

(I have never read Moby Dick, but I have picked up via osmosis from the general cultural narrative as the canonical example. Either you think "Wow, this is a lot of stuff about whaling I never knew, how cool!" or you think "Why are you still yammering on about the history of whaling get back to the giant whale fight!" :) )