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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
What a fantastic idea that one person could create such a thing. Every human should read this at some point in their lives.
Took me ten months and a class to read...yes...was it worth it....yes...will I read it again....yes..I said yes I will Yes.
Second reading May 2015. My desert island book that makes me wish I was stranded on a desert island. Next reading will be the audiobook read by Jim Norton to capture the lyric qualities of this magnificent book.
Second reading May 2015. My desert island book that makes me wish I was stranded on a desert island. Next reading will be the audiobook read by Jim Norton to capture the lyric qualities of this magnificent book.
Two stars for the struggle. When I was focused at the beginning, it wasn't too bad, but then I ran out of time to just sit and read this for hours, and it turned into a horror story. I finally just forced myself through. Wouldn't recommend it unless you're really truly up for a challenge and have quite a bit of free time.
I'm finished with this beast of a book! Hazza!
Seriously though, if you're going to start it, you've gotta finish it. The last chapter alone ties everything up and leaves you well fulfilled.
But don't read this if Train of Thought is not for you. You will become frustrated and hate this brick. I did at times, but I still enjoyed the bulk of it.
Seriously though, if you're going to start it, you've gotta finish it. The last chapter alone ties everything up and leaves you well fulfilled.
But don't read this if Train of Thought is not for you. You will become frustrated and hate this brick. I did at times, but I still enjoyed the bulk of it.
My Recommendation: Unless you have some burning desire to read it, you could probably pass. I mean parts of this were really really good, other parts, not so much. I definitely understand the genius behind parts of it, but other parts of it were beyond indecipherable. I’m very glad to say that I have read it, but I don’t think it’s one of those books that I will talk about because let’s face it I probably only understood a quarter to a third of it.
My Response: It’s been three weeks since my last post, but obviously it was worth it. At the end of the month I’ll have a two month recap, but for now you just have to bask in the glory of knowing someone who has completed the infamous Ulysses!
It only took a little over four months, but if you remember I started way back in June with the Serial Reader (app website). Serial delivers 10-15 minute sections of the book daily to you and you make your way through the book. I had concerns about reading the book this way especially with remembering details from previous issues, but overall I had a pretty good experience. This one had 109 sections based on my preference and the first half was great to read by serial, but the last two sections weren’t quite as easily read.
Continue reading on my book blog at geoffwhaley.com.
My Response: It’s been three weeks since my last post, but obviously it was worth it. At the end of the month I’ll have a two month recap, but for now you just have to bask in the glory of knowing someone who has completed the infamous Ulysses!
It only took a little over four months, but if you remember I started way back in June with the Serial Reader (app website). Serial delivers 10-15 minute sections of the book daily to you and you make your way through the book. I had concerns about reading the book this way especially with remembering details from previous issues, but overall I had a pretty good experience. This one had 109 sections based on my preference and the first half was great to read by serial, but the last two sections weren’t quite as easily read.
Continue reading on my book blog at geoffwhaley.com.
Boring nonsense spouted to sound pretentious and that’s coming from an English major.
You either love Ulysses or you hate it. And I loathed it.
welcome to... JULYSSES.
this is part of a project in which i read intimidating classics over the course of a month in chunks i delude myself into finding approachable. this nightmare of a book apparently doesn't have "chapters," because that would make this seem at all doable, but it does have 3 books and 18 unlabeled basically unmarked episodes. so i'll be doing one of those a day.
in other words, i'm acting out of self hatred again.
EPISODE ONE
i hate that these are called episodes, because it's making me think about star wars and thinking about star wars is making me feel nostalgic and excited and the only things i should be feeling right now are, like, grit and determination.
i anticipated that the difficulty here would be that the language would be super dense, but it's actually that it all sounds very funny and it's easy to fall into reading without thinking about it at all. i'm just letting words glide through my brain. straight vibing.
EPISODE TWO
these first two have been pretty short, which can only mean suffering for future me. too bad for her! i'm having a great time.
EPISODE THREE
another short episode and we've finished the entire first book. the level of unearned confidence i'm getting from what a chill and fun time this has been so far...james joyce should be scared.
fun that the word "snot" was in the 1930s irish lexicon.
EPISODE FOUR
do you ever read a kind of gross description and think, welp, that's gonna stick in my brain for the rest of my life?
file the faint urine flavor of sheep's kidneys under that.
EPISODE FIVE
when i was 14 and read the odyssey in school, i was also a little brat and insisted time and again that it was sooo boring.
imagine past me's disgust at finding out i'm now voluntarily reading an odyssey retelling with no monsters, no witches, and no gods. just a bunch of drunk irish guys.
in other words, the odyssey motif is just now starting to be more apparent here.
EPISODE SIX
well, these are still nice and short, but it's getting to the point where i'm impressed with myself just for understanding at all what a paragraph means on first read. so. scratch the hubris from before i guess.
EPISODE SEVEN
oh boy, we're getting experimental. the sudden fun we're having with formatting is not upping my confidence.
i have to say, everything i'm hearing about this molly gal is making me yearn for more content. we've got a hottie adulteress singing genius who bosses her husband around in the picture? let's get back to that!
EPISODE EIGHT
i took a week off of this project, i flew a redeye last night, and i am currently chugging an energy drink in the hopes that scientists have had a breakthrough on sleep-replacement technology since i last attempted this. in other words i could not be worse prepared to take on james joyce right now.
thank god for other people's analyses.
EPISODE NINE
shoutout to james joyce. would love to understand anything he writes on the first read by myself with no help from summaries or outside insights someday.
this was actually more comprehensible than usual because it's made up mostly of self-serious and annoying wordplay-based literary discussion, which is my primary form of communication, but still.
EPISODE TEN
toss me in the midst of a varying-perspective crowd of random irish city-dwellers and suddenly i'm having a blast and a half.
i should've just read dubliners. if only i could make as good of a pun with that one.
EPISODE ELEVEN
in this section the book is mostly making mean comments about its characters via nonsense words and euphemisms, which makes it incredibly relatable to me. even more so because it also seems as haunted by the question of when the hell molly is going to show up as i am.
EPISODE TWELVE
it's honestly terrifying that i've read two-thirds of these sections and am not even halfway done in terms of page count. what horrors await me?
oh sure, why not, let's switch into first person and a variety of exaggerated styles all in one episode. i was. just thinking we weren't having enough fun with experimental structure.
EPISODE THIRTEEN
one thing about me is: if i'm reading a classic, i am going to find and become obsessed with the single solitary female character with interiority. even if its intention is to make fun of readers like me.
okay, well. jail for bloom in my opinion. and probably james joyce too while we're sentencing.
EPISODE FOURTEEN
i have to say, i've taken the prior 13 episodes for granted. i thought i was being pretty reasonable about how difficult of a read this has been, but i didn't take the time to be grateful that joyce was actually writing with modern english words.
you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
EPISODE FIFTEEN
god damn it. i knew this was coming. today's section is 181 pages long.
"(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gas ovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.)" tag yourself. i'm drowning in authentic dublin guinness (it tastes different when entering your lungs in ireland).
EPISODE SIXTEEN
in the moments when i can actually understand what's going on here (before reading summaries and analyses which i always do like a good student), this book is a blast. it's so goddamn funny to be nervous to have your friend over for a sleepover because when you brought home a random dog off the street with a lame paw your wife was mad, and this is basically the same since the guy hurt his hand earlier.
EPISODE SEVENTEEN
happy penultimate day of julysses to all who celebrate.
if the entire thing were written in this q&a format i would be a lot more confident in my basic comprehension.
EPISODE EIGHTEEN
we're doing this. we're finishing this out. all that stands between me and the end is our biggest challenge yet: james joyce writing about what he thinks women think about sex. all those times i asked for more molly content...i knew not what i brought on myself.
that and the fact that all 50 pages of this is like 8 sentences.
OVERALL
for sure this is a masterpiece and also reading it is an unrelenting nightmare at every second and on every page. the idea that any book should require multiple months or semesters or years of study to understand is contrary to my belief system. (i don't know what my belief system is but it's definitely against that.)
i don't know if i'm glad i read it, and i do know i could read this three more times and still not fully understand it, but you've got to hand it to joyce: it's incredibly funny to write a deeply respected, unbelievably layered and complex literary masterpiece that is 99% about some guy being h*rny. this is truly the throughline of great literature.
rating: 3.5
this is part of a project in which i read intimidating classics over the course of a month in chunks i delude myself into finding approachable. this nightmare of a book apparently doesn't have "chapters," because that would make this seem at all doable, but it does have 3 books and 18 unlabeled basically unmarked episodes. so i'll be doing one of those a day.
in other words, i'm acting out of self hatred again.
EPISODE ONE
i hate that these are called episodes, because it's making me think about star wars and thinking about star wars is making me feel nostalgic and excited and the only things i should be feeling right now are, like, grit and determination.
i anticipated that the difficulty here would be that the language would be super dense, but it's actually that it all sounds very funny and it's easy to fall into reading without thinking about it at all. i'm just letting words glide through my brain. straight vibing.
EPISODE TWO
these first two have been pretty short, which can only mean suffering for future me. too bad for her! i'm having a great time.
EPISODE THREE
another short episode and we've finished the entire first book. the level of unearned confidence i'm getting from what a chill and fun time this has been so far...james joyce should be scared.
fun that the word "snot" was in the 1930s irish lexicon.
EPISODE FOUR
do you ever read a kind of gross description and think, welp, that's gonna stick in my brain for the rest of my life?
file the faint urine flavor of sheep's kidneys under that.
EPISODE FIVE
when i was 14 and read the odyssey in school, i was also a little brat and insisted time and again that it was sooo boring.
imagine past me's disgust at finding out i'm now voluntarily reading an odyssey retelling with no monsters, no witches, and no gods. just a bunch of drunk irish guys.
in other words, the odyssey motif is just now starting to be more apparent here.
EPISODE SIX
well, these are still nice and short, but it's getting to the point where i'm impressed with myself just for understanding at all what a paragraph means on first read. so. scratch the hubris from before i guess.
EPISODE SEVEN
oh boy, we're getting experimental. the sudden fun we're having with formatting is not upping my confidence.
i have to say, everything i'm hearing about this molly gal is making me yearn for more content. we've got a hottie adulteress singing genius who bosses her husband around in the picture? let's get back to that!
EPISODE EIGHT
i took a week off of this project, i flew a redeye last night, and i am currently chugging an energy drink in the hopes that scientists have had a breakthrough on sleep-replacement technology since i last attempted this. in other words i could not be worse prepared to take on james joyce right now.
thank god for other people's analyses.
EPISODE NINE
shoutout to james joyce. would love to understand anything he writes on the first read by myself with no help from summaries or outside insights someday.
this was actually more comprehensible than usual because it's made up mostly of self-serious and annoying wordplay-based literary discussion, which is my primary form of communication, but still.
EPISODE TEN
toss me in the midst of a varying-perspective crowd of random irish city-dwellers and suddenly i'm having a blast and a half.
i should've just read dubliners. if only i could make as good of a pun with that one.
EPISODE ELEVEN
in this section the book is mostly making mean comments about its characters via nonsense words and euphemisms, which makes it incredibly relatable to me. even more so because it also seems as haunted by the question of when the hell molly is going to show up as i am.
EPISODE TWELVE
it's honestly terrifying that i've read two-thirds of these sections and am not even halfway done in terms of page count. what horrors await me?
oh sure, why not, let's switch into first person and a variety of exaggerated styles all in one episode. i was. just thinking we weren't having enough fun with experimental structure.
EPISODE THIRTEEN
one thing about me is: if i'm reading a classic, i am going to find and become obsessed with the single solitary female character with interiority. even if its intention is to make fun of readers like me.
okay, well. jail for bloom in my opinion. and probably james joyce too while we're sentencing.
EPISODE FOURTEEN
i have to say, i've taken the prior 13 episodes for granted. i thought i was being pretty reasonable about how difficult of a read this has been, but i didn't take the time to be grateful that joyce was actually writing with modern english words.
you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
EPISODE FIFTEEN
god damn it. i knew this was coming. today's section is 181 pages long.
"(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gas ovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.)" tag yourself. i'm drowning in authentic dublin guinness (it tastes different when entering your lungs in ireland).
EPISODE SIXTEEN
in the moments when i can actually understand what's going on here (before reading summaries and analyses which i always do like a good student), this book is a blast. it's so goddamn funny to be nervous to have your friend over for a sleepover because when you brought home a random dog off the street with a lame paw your wife was mad, and this is basically the same since the guy hurt his hand earlier.
EPISODE SEVENTEEN
happy penultimate day of julysses to all who celebrate.
if the entire thing were written in this q&a format i would be a lot more confident in my basic comprehension.
EPISODE EIGHTEEN
we're doing this. we're finishing this out. all that stands between me and the end is our biggest challenge yet: james joyce writing about what he thinks women think about sex. all those times i asked for more molly content...i knew not what i brought on myself.
that and the fact that all 50 pages of this is like 8 sentences.
OVERALL
for sure this is a masterpiece and also reading it is an unrelenting nightmare at every second and on every page. the idea that any book should require multiple months or semesters or years of study to understand is contrary to my belief system. (i don't know what my belief system is but it's definitely against that.)
i don't know if i'm glad i read it, and i do know i could read this three more times and still not fully understand it, but you've got to hand it to joyce: it's incredibly funny to write a deeply respected, unbelievably layered and complex literary masterpiece that is 99% about some guy being h*rny. this is truly the throughline of great literature.
rating: 3.5
Just couldn’t finish it. Didn’t make sense to me at all…
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes