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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
How can you rate a book like Ulysses? It was hilarious, frustrating, brilliant, galling, eyerolling, evocative, stressful and perplexing all at once. I’m still reeling from it.
challenging
emotional
funny
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
challenging
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Boy oh boy. Never in my life have I read such a long book and have had so little thoughts. I will say that I found it to be surprisingly funny. But I get why it got banned...
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I feel like I need the SparkNotes summaries to grasp what's going on in the story fully. The writing style and subtle jumps from real life to hallucinations or subtle jumps from internal thoughts to spoken dialogue also made it difficult to get through the story. It's an interesting undertaking for readers, and I'm glad I can finally seem impressive by saying I've read it.
An incredible, mind bending, weirdly heart warming read that I now need to do hours more research on. Five stars!
challenging
slow-paced
To be clear, I read excerpts in school and have not yet taken up the weighty task of competing this absolute unit of a book. I don't know if I ever will, but the stories were definitely interesting.
One of the most difficult books I've ever read. The reward is that I feel like the characters in this book are real-life acquaintances.
The real truth behind why Ulysses was written
All the reviewers here seem to think that this is just a piece of fiction – may be great but not much more than that. It is much more than that – let me tell you the inside story. JJ wrote it for a mission when he was told of the great calamity that is sure to destroy the humanity in future by Doctor Who and after which only JJ’s novel could save the planet. This is what Doctor Who told him:
In the year 2039, some sort of Virus will destroy the entire humanity while leaving other things intact; then after like a couple of centuries aliens will come on Earth and decide to reengineer humans from DNA and stuff. While they are doing so, they will also find our fiction – and start reading the novels so as to know what sort of creature human beings were. The authors they will find include greats like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Homer.
Now imagine their surprise when after having read about greatness of human souls from such geniuses; what they end up creating is a creature who keeps crying, is almost always confused, has weird fantasies and dreams, has a mind that wonders about all sort of things, is not of sort that is always ready to pick fight when it is question of honor, doesn’t say any beautiful quotable lines - even when he is sad, is pervert, picks his nose, farts, lies stupidly in trying to impress, keeps asking for food every few hours, needs to use toilets and so on – Our friendly aliens will think they have made a giant mistake and shall try again from start and upon getting the same result again and again, they will be about to give up; when one of them will suddenly discover ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce and our very own L. Bloom shall save the humanity.
All the reviewers here seem to think that this is just a piece of fiction – may be great but not much more than that. It is much more than that – let me tell you the inside story. JJ wrote it for a mission when he was told of the great calamity that is sure to destroy the humanity in future by Doctor Who and after which only JJ’s novel could save the planet. This is what Doctor Who told him:
In the year 2039, some sort of Virus will destroy the entire humanity while leaving other things intact; then after like a couple of centuries aliens will come on Earth and decide to reengineer humans from DNA and stuff. While they are doing so, they will also find our fiction – and start reading the novels so as to know what sort of creature human beings were. The authors they will find include greats like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Homer.
Now imagine their surprise when after having read about greatness of human souls from such geniuses; what they end up creating is a creature who keeps crying, is almost always confused, has weird fantasies and dreams, has a mind that wonders about all sort of things, is not of sort that is always ready to pick fight when it is question of honor, doesn’t say any beautiful quotable lines - even when he is sad, is pervert, picks his nose, farts, lies stupidly in trying to impress, keeps asking for food every few hours, needs to use toilets and so on – Our friendly aliens will think they have made a giant mistake and shall try again from start and upon getting the same result again and again, they will be about to give up; when one of them will suddenly discover ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce and our very own L. Bloom shall save the humanity.
This is blatant self-promotion, I know, but instead of writing a review, here is a link to the blogpost I wrote about Ulysses: http://bnstc.blogspot.com/2015/03/reading-ulysses.html