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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
challenging
funny
inspiring
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
"Ulysses" is about the totality of experience. For Joyce, it's the totality of a single man's day in the life. For Melville's "Moby-Dick", it's not just whaling, but the essence of adventure and being out of one's element, then looking back on those salad days with the knowledge and pity of older age. For books like that... of course you won't get everything. It's not your life. It's Starbuck's life, or Ishmael's life, or Bloom's life.
If someone wrote a comprehensive story about your particular existence, then there would be thousands of allusions that a reader wouldn't pick up on simply because the minutiae of everyday existence is filled with nuance and even encyclopedic level of experience. So, I'll recommend that you don't look up footnotes. Just read it. Experience what you experience. Then, whatever you walk away with from "Ulysses" (and other modernist literature) will be completely and uniquely yours as you bring your own allusions and experiences to the book.
That lesson is why this is one of the top five books I have ever read in my life - and that's not even getting into the prose, the deep satire, the idiosyncratic all-caps Dublin, the allegories... life also goes on.
If someone wrote a comprehensive story about your particular existence, then there would be thousands of allusions that a reader wouldn't pick up on simply because the minutiae of everyday existence is filled with nuance and even encyclopedic level of experience. So, I'll recommend that you don't look up footnotes. Just read it. Experience what you experience. Then, whatever you walk away with from "Ulysses" (and other modernist literature) will be completely and uniquely yours as you bring your own allusions and experiences to the book.
That lesson is why this is one of the top five books I have ever read in my life - and that's not even getting into the prose, the deep satire, the idiosyncratic all-caps Dublin, the allegories... life also goes on.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Alcoholism, Child death, Miscarriage, Violence, Alcohol
Minor: Infidelity, Antisemitism, Pregnancy
Some of the writing and mastery of literary devices was so beautiful - it was just the story and content that I didn't care for at all.
Is this a book that you can like or dislike? We had a whole one semester long lecture about the book and I still feel like I have a hard time understanding anything. Incredible.
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
It’s everything everyone says about it- beautiful, frustrating, infuriatingly clever, slightly painful to read at times. It’s a masterpiece in writing and I recommend everybody and nobody read it.
I have nursed this book for months now, reading it sections at a time and enjoying - and at the same time hating - every moment of it. It says something when I somehow started and finished 22 other books in the same space I read this one. I re-started it twice. I needed the breaks. I need my mind to digest and savor what I had read. I needed to read a book where the narrative was straight forward so I didn't feel like a complete idiot.
At times infuriated with the text I was reading, and others so caught up in it I couldn't put it down, ULYSSES to put it nicely is a difficult read. Was it worth it? Yes, I'd say so. Even when the text was making my mind implode, I was still caught up in it, fascinated by the prose. I'm still going over sections of it in my head - still unsure of my feelings towards it but that in my opinion is a successful work of art, one that makes your mind work.
Now I have it on my shelf - the 1922 text with a plethora of notes, appendixes, indexes and critical studies and I am sure I will pick it up again and go deeper into these extras.
At times infuriated with the text I was reading, and others so caught up in it I couldn't put it down, ULYSSES to put it nicely is a difficult read. Was it worth it? Yes, I'd say so. Even when the text was making my mind implode, I was still caught up in it, fascinated by the prose. I'm still going over sections of it in my head - still unsure of my feelings towards it but that in my opinion is a successful work of art, one that makes your mind work.
Now I have it on my shelf - the 1922 text with a plethora of notes, appendixes, indexes and critical studies and I am sure I will pick it up again and go deeper into these extras.
"I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries, arguing over what I meant!" ~James Joyce
"He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melon-smellonous osculation."
It's as if you assembled 7 or 8 distinct personalities, each intellectual and resourceful, and had them write pages of a story, and then interwove those pages into a complex but coherent narative. There's not a page that I didn't read at least twice, and each reading brought new insights. There is a stream of consciousness here that ebbs and flows. About the time I feel like I have a little firm footing, Joyce pulls the rug out from under me. He writes about landscapes and love and lust and farts and menstration with matter-of-fact fluidity and unflinching honesty. There are things here that everybody thinks about and nobody talks about. I'm sure I'll ruminate and pontificate on this one for days to come.
And god is it gloriously Irish! There should be a law that every edition be printed in kelly green ink and be bookmarked with a shamrock. 🍀
"He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melon-smellonous osculation."
It's as if you assembled 7 or 8 distinct personalities, each intellectual and resourceful, and had them write pages of a story, and then interwove those pages into a complex but coherent narative. There's not a page that I didn't read at least twice, and each reading brought new insights. There is a stream of consciousness here that ebbs and flows. About the time I feel like I have a little firm footing, Joyce pulls the rug out from under me. He writes about landscapes and love and lust and farts and menstration with matter-of-fact fluidity and unflinching honesty. There are things here that everybody thinks about and nobody talks about. I'm sure I'll ruminate and pontificate on this one for days to come.
And god is it gloriously Irish! There should be a law that every edition be printed in kelly green ink and be bookmarked with a shamrock. 🍀