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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
if beckett's "three novels" is like having a stroke over 400pgs, this is like a mushroom trip that won't end while a drunk cuckold tells you about their day. respect for the innovation and the effort put on to compose it; did it pay off thought? my answer will differ depending on the day i've had.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Antisemitism, Religious bigotry
Moderate: Alcoholism, Child death, Cursing, Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Alcohol, Classism
Minor: Ableism, Eating disorder, Violence, Murder, Injury/Injury detail
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I feel ill equipped to enjoy this book. Not that I don't understand what happened, or that it's something I dont think is my thing, or that it's too difficult for me to follow. No, there are just clearly layers and layers of stuff to sift through that I don't have the time or patience to sort out.
Like, this doesn't just talk about Irish home rule, it talks about the detailed specifics of Irish politicians in Joyce's time. I can get that, but the amount of research I need to do to actually understand what's being communicated in some sections is a lot.
I can see why there are whole courses dedicated to this book in some English programs. Holy hell.
Anyways, the prose is phenomenal, just flows directly into the brain making the whole thing feel like a fever dream, which it sometimes basically is, and I would recommend it just to see Joyce toy with the English language.
Like, this doesn't just talk about Irish home rule, it talks about the detailed specifics of Irish politicians in Joyce's time. I can get that, but the amount of research I need to do to actually understand what's being communicated in some sections is a lot.
I can see why there are whole courses dedicated to this book in some English programs. Holy hell.
Anyways, the prose is phenomenal, just flows directly into the brain making the whole thing feel like a fever dream, which it sometimes basically is, and I would recommend it just to see Joyce toy with the English language.
I just read Ulysses.
Yes, that nearly 800-page modernist work of genius. I read Ulysses and found it to be time consuming, beautiful, irritating, gross, brilliant, obscene, and, above all, difficult. It was the most difficult thing I've ever read. Ever.
The difficulty didn't lie in the length, I mean, I've got a thing for big, heavy, long books. (I adores them!) Nor was it the stream of consciousness. (I'm a HUGE fan of [a: Virginia Woolf|6765|Virginia Woolf|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1419596619p2/6765.jpg].) And I don't think it was the fact that I haven't read [b: The Odyssey|1381|The Odyssey|Homer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390173285s/1381.jpg|3356006] by [a: Homer|903|Homer|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1390672749p2/903.jpg], though if I had or if I do in the future, I'm sure my reactions to Ulysses may be, I don't know, enhanced? The difficulty, I think, lies in James Joyce himself and the manner in which he wrote this book.
I mean, Joyce wrote and published a book which reinterprets Homer's Odyssey as a single day in the life of an ordinary guy as he goes around Dublin. A book divided into 18 chapters without the names or numbers of said chapters appearing ANYWHERE in the published book (though they seem to be well-known and commonplace amongst some scholarly/professor types). And every one of the 18 chapters is written in a different style. One chapter is written as a parody of every style of literature Joyce knew. Another chapter is written as musical composition applied to literature. One chapter is presented in first person narrative, while another is narrated by an entirely new, omniscient narrator. There's a chapter that's nearly 150 pages long and is all of the characters' subconscious minds in the form of a play. Oh, and there's a chapter that's just answers to a series of questions (like, hundreds of questions). And I can't forget to mention that chapter that's completely devoid of punctuation.
All of that, is what makes Joyce's Ulysses so difficult to read.
But, even if you don't like Ulysses or Joyce, you've got to admire his his sheer audacity in publishing this. He's a genius. It's obvious. And he's letting us know it while he thumbs his nose at us; all of us poor fools who take on the task of reading Ulysses.
I read Ulysses.
I read it all, and I'm not going to lie, there were points in my reading where I was carried on by sheer willpower alone. There were times when I was disgusted (like when he's pooping, and thinking while pooping, and telling me about his pooping, and telling me about his thinking while pooping). There were points when I was shocked and saddened. But there were also times when I smiled at the humor, grimaced at the pain, and sighed at the absurdity. There were also times when I read an EXTREMELY LENGTHY passage, only to find it didn't happen or didn't have any bearing on anything at all, as it was only imagined. WTF, JOYCE?! UGH!
I read Ulysses.
It's realism, modernist, it's even epic though the events in the book all happen in one 24-hour period. It's filled with religious symbols and foreshadowing, and all those things that English Lit teachers love to go on and on and on about. It mirrors [b: The Odyssey|7989499|The Odyssey|Gareth Hinds|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320548855s/7989499.jpg|12460666] but references many other things, including [b: Hamlet|1420|Hamlet|William Shakespeare|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1351051208s/1420.jpg|1885548]. And it's obscene - somewhat terribly obscene in parts, (it wasn't allowed in the United States until 1933) and it's not just the pooping and masturbation, but also the sex stuff and the frankness re: it. Even if the character doesn't say or do it, you still know about it because it's thought. The frankness re: feelings, people, ideas, sex - yes it's obscene, but it's totally, I don't know, human?
There were times while I was reading when I just imagined what I'd do to treat myself for "making it through," scenarios that I indulged in, 'when I finish reading Ulysses, I'm going to: drink a few beers/buy a new handbag/throw myself an f'in party/shout to the world that 'I read Ulysses.
I read Ulysses.
This book deserves 5 stars. Did I really love it? Not always. Do I really think it was amazing? Not always. But I find that if you can get through the sentences like:
Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendor is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferant continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction.
and you can see the beauty in passages like:
Pain that was not yet the pain of love fretted his head.
The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace.
or the wit in passages like:
Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.
or the savvy advice in passages like:
The high roads are dreary but they lead to the town.
You, too will come to understand. You mayn't understand every little thing Joyce is harping about - but you will 'get' why this is considered such a masterpiece. It got it - not right away, but as I thought about it after I finished it, I got it.
Because
I read Ulysses.
Yes, that nearly 800-page modernist work of genius. I read Ulysses and found it to be time consuming, beautiful, irritating, gross, brilliant, obscene, and, above all, difficult. It was the most difficult thing I've ever read. Ever.
The difficulty didn't lie in the length, I mean, I've got a thing for big, heavy, long books. (I adores them!) Nor was it the stream of consciousness. (I'm a HUGE fan of [a: Virginia Woolf|6765|Virginia Woolf|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1419596619p2/6765.jpg].) And I don't think it was the fact that I haven't read [b: The Odyssey|1381|The Odyssey|Homer|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390173285s/1381.jpg|3356006] by [a: Homer|903|Homer|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1390672749p2/903.jpg], though if I had or if I do in the future, I'm sure my reactions to Ulysses may be, I don't know, enhanced? The difficulty, I think, lies in James Joyce himself and the manner in which he wrote this book.
I mean, Joyce wrote and published a book which reinterprets Homer's Odyssey as a single day in the life of an ordinary guy as he goes around Dublin. A book divided into 18 chapters without the names or numbers of said chapters appearing ANYWHERE in the published book (though they seem to be well-known and commonplace amongst some scholarly/professor types). And every one of the 18 chapters is written in a different style. One chapter is written as a parody of every style of literature Joyce knew. Another chapter is written as musical composition applied to literature. One chapter is presented in first person narrative, while another is narrated by an entirely new, omniscient narrator. There's a chapter that's nearly 150 pages long and is all of the characters' subconscious minds in the form of a play. Oh, and there's a chapter that's just answers to a series of questions (like, hundreds of questions). And I can't forget to mention that chapter that's completely devoid of punctuation.
All of that, is what makes Joyce's Ulysses so difficult to read.
But, even if you don't like Ulysses or Joyce, you've got to admire his his sheer audacity in publishing this. He's a genius. It's obvious. And he's letting us know it while he thumbs his nose at us; all of us poor fools who take on the task of reading Ulysses.
I read Ulysses.
I read it all, and I'm not going to lie, there were points in my reading where I was carried on by sheer willpower alone. There were times when I was disgusted (like when he's pooping, and thinking while pooping, and telling me about his pooping, and telling me about his thinking while pooping). There were points when I was shocked and saddened. But there were also times when I smiled at the humor, grimaced at the pain, and sighed at the absurdity. There were also times when I read an EXTREMELY LENGTHY passage, only to find it didn't happen or didn't have any bearing on anything at all, as it was only imagined. WTF, JOYCE?! UGH!
I read Ulysses.
It's realism, modernist, it's even epic though the events in the book all happen in one 24-hour period. It's filled with religious symbols and foreshadowing, and all those things that English Lit teachers love to go on and on and on about. It mirrors [b: The Odyssey|7989499|The Odyssey|Gareth Hinds|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320548855s/7989499.jpg|12460666] but references many other things, including [b: Hamlet|1420|Hamlet|William Shakespeare|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1351051208s/1420.jpg|1885548]. And it's obscene - somewhat terribly obscene in parts, (it wasn't allowed in the United States until 1933) and it's not just the pooping and masturbation, but also the sex stuff and the frankness re: it. Even if the character doesn't say or do it, you still know about it because it's thought. The frankness re: feelings, people, ideas, sex - yes it's obscene, but it's totally, I don't know, human?
There were times while I was reading when I just imagined what I'd do to treat myself for "making it through," scenarios that I indulged in, 'when I finish reading Ulysses, I'm going to: drink a few beers/buy a new handbag/throw myself an f'in party/shout to the world that 'I read Ulysses.
I read Ulysses.
This book deserves 5 stars. Did I really love it? Not always. Do I really think it was amazing? Not always. But I find that if you can get through the sentences like:
Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendor is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferant continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction.
and you can see the beauty in passages like:
Pain that was not yet the pain of love fretted his head.
The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace.
or the wit in passages like:
Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.
or the savvy advice in passages like:
The high roads are dreary but they lead to the town.
You, too will come to understand. You mayn't understand every little thing Joyce is harping about - but you will 'get' why this is considered such a masterpiece. It got it - not right away, but as I thought about it after I finished it, I got it.
Because
I read Ulysses.
This is not a review.
Too many years ago to count, the summer after studying [b:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|965500|A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1330216970s/965500.jpg|3298883] and [b:Finnegans Wake|1718198|Finnegans Wake|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336408311s/1718198.jpg|322098] with a feisty, elderly Irish Jesuit priest at the Catholic university I attended, I attempted [b:Ulysses|331597|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347878479s/331597.jpg|2368224] on my own. I didn't finish it. In fact, I hardly got started. I believe I stalled during episode 7 (Aeolus), which is where, this time, I had to go looking for some help for the first time. I understand now why my professor didn't choose this as one of Joyce's works for us to study, even though we read [b:Finnegans Wake|1718198|Finnegans Wake|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336408311s/1718198.jpg|322098]; as very young adults we did not yet have nearly enough experience with literature and language in general.
Several times in the beginning I wondered why I was continuing to read on, since there was so much I didn't 'get,' and then, right at that point, I'd read something that made me continue. For example, during episode 9 (Scylla and Charybdis) the most difficult thing was not the words I was reading, but their context: I didn't know who was talking, who was being talked about and whether they were actually talking or thinking. I let it go and just read, and eventually it made a kind of sense. Near the end of the episode I breathed a sigh of relief that I know Shakespeare and Hamlet. It then became fun. And fun this book is, and funny: several times I laughed out loud, or inwardly groaned at Joyce's childlike delight in punning. As I read, or rather reread passages, a meaning would surface: a giddy, heady experience akin perhaps to what a young child feels upon learning to read.
By chance I'd acquired an edition with no notes and no annotations, so for the most part I just read without stopping. Of course I looked up a few things online, not to mention reading all the great posts by my GR group buddies. If not for them, who knows when or if I'd ever have restarted or even finished this? A schedule (thanks, Kalliope!) makes me a little anxious and that's a good thing. At first I couldn't imagine myself one day rereading this, as quite a few of my online friends do, but as I got deeper and deeper into it, oh, yes.
Too many years ago to count, the summer after studying [b:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|965500|A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1330216970s/965500.jpg|3298883] and [b:Finnegans Wake|1718198|Finnegans Wake|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336408311s/1718198.jpg|322098] with a feisty, elderly Irish Jesuit priest at the Catholic university I attended, I attempted [b:Ulysses|331597|Ulysses|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347878479s/331597.jpg|2368224] on my own. I didn't finish it. In fact, I hardly got started. I believe I stalled during episode 7 (Aeolus), which is where, this time, I had to go looking for some help for the first time. I understand now why my professor didn't choose this as one of Joyce's works for us to study, even though we read [b:Finnegans Wake|1718198|Finnegans Wake|James Joyce|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336408311s/1718198.jpg|322098]; as very young adults we did not yet have nearly enough experience with literature and language in general.
Several times in the beginning I wondered why I was continuing to read on, since there was so much I didn't 'get,' and then, right at that point, I'd read something that made me continue. For example, during episode 9 (Scylla and Charybdis) the most difficult thing was not the words I was reading, but their context: I didn't know who was talking, who was being talked about and whether they were actually talking or thinking. I let it go and just read, and eventually it made a kind of sense. Near the end of the episode I breathed a sigh of relief that I know Shakespeare and Hamlet. It then became fun. And fun this book is, and funny: several times I laughed out loud, or inwardly groaned at Joyce's childlike delight in punning. As I read, or rather reread passages, a meaning would surface: a giddy, heady experience akin perhaps to what a young child feels upon learning to read.
By chance I'd acquired an edition with no notes and no annotations, so for the most part I just read without stopping. Of course I looked up a few things online, not to mention reading all the great posts by my GR group buddies. If not for them, who knows when or if I'd ever have restarted or even finished this? A schedule (thanks, Kalliope!) makes me a little anxious and that's a good thing. At first I couldn't imagine myself one day rereading this, as quite a few of my online friends do, but as I got deeper and deeper into it, oh, yes.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Thoughts while reading Ulysses:
1. It starts off holding no punches.
2. Talking about his momma is bold
3. "Moody brooding" is my favorite phrase
4. Listening to this with a full cast was a good decision.
5. "Naughty boy" is forever stuck in my head
6. The amount of songs in this book should make it a musical
7. These men are fangirling over Shakespeare
8. These people live boring lives
9. It's not a long philosophical book if we don't discuss Plato at some point
10. Really what is the point of death and justice
11. At least this story includes women
12. Is this story low key about religion?
13. The hate speech is a little uncomfy
14. "Womanly woman" is a phrase only a man could write.
15. Chapter 13 is "spicy." I see what you did James Joyce.
16. Why is this book so long?
17. Bloom, you are not the father.
18. Molly is the villain
19. This book is really about finding ones self and the meaning of family
20. Did I enjoy this novel? Not sure. But I'm glad it's over.
21. June 16, 1904 is a long day.
It took me several months and a very supportive reading group to finish Ulysses. It was good, at least the parts I understood were. I'm sure if I ever read it a second time it will make more sense and I will like it more.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
An interesting read but why the f did I tell English teachers my parents named me after Molly Bloom?
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes