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About
This is a notoriously tricky book, but it's so rewarding and so worth reading. Our Audrey guide and resident Joyce expert Sophie Corser will hold your hand through every episode, with contextual notes, personal reflections, recaps of each episode and character descriptions. This is a unique opportunity to finally read, enjoy and finish this classic of English literature!
Here's the schedule and more about the book on Audrey and this listen-along. If you haven't already, do sign up to receive our emails and reminders (and to be in with a chance of winning next month's listen-along book!)
The following people have been involved in the production of the Audrey guided edition of Ulysses, and we're so excited for you to enjoy it!
Narrators: Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan
Guide: Sophie Corser
Illustrator: Julie Ann Monks
Forums
Introductions 👋
Do we have anyone here who's read it before? Or tried? We know there are lots of first timers and quite a lot of apprehension, but we're gonna have a lot of fun!
Happy Bloomsday! General Forum
- Who are your favourite and least favourite characters?
- Is there a quote (or two, or ten!) from Ulysses that resonated with you? Please share them with us!
- What are your favourite words from Sophie’s ‘good word radar’ or other words from the book?
- What is the most interesting thing you have learnt from Sophie’s guide notes?
I. 1. Telemachus
Target: 16 Jun 2024
- ‘scrotumtightening’
- ‘snotgreen’
I. 2. Nestor
Target: 17 Jun 2024
‘seacold’
“The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.”
“— History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
I. 3. Proteus
Target: 18 Jun 2024
‘shellcocoacoloured’
‘lacefringe’
II. 4. Calypso
Target: 20 Jun 2024
“A cloud began to cover the sun wholly slowly wholly. Grey. Far”
She compares it to this quote in Episode 1:
“A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green.”
‘Mkgnao!’
‘Mrkgnao!’
Do these cat-words line up with what you heard on the audiobook (right near the beginning of the chapter, if you want to go back and listen)? How would you say them aloud?
II. 5. Lotus Eaters
Target: 21 Jun 2024
“Better get that lotion made up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time Sweny’s in Lincoln Place. Chemists rarely move.”
“Time to get a bath around the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage… Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream. This is my body.”
II. 6. Hades
Target: 23 Jun 2024
It’s 11 a.m. and we’re with Bloom and several others who are going to a funeral at Glasnevin Cemetery, north of Dublin.
“Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather. Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face.”
Hugh Kenner (in his study Ulysses, 1980) determined that there are 2 key rules at play in how Ulysses gives us information:
- “The writer should be alert to what his characters would know.”
- “The reader should not be told what no one present would think worth an act of attention.”
II. 7. Aeolus
Target: 24 Jun 2024
What did you think of these headlines or ‘crossheadings’?
“What opera is like a railway line? […] The Rose of Castille. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!”
II. 8. Lestrygonians
Target: 26 Jun 2024
“Me. And me now.”
Have you ever thought of a divide between your past and present selves?
“Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.”
‘quopped’
“His heart quopped softly.”
We are treated to Sophie narrating a snippet towards the end of this episode and explaining what’s going on in relation to Bloom’s heart. Sophie also reminds us that a lot of what’s going on will get clearer in retrospect – later on in the book. Keep going!!
Can you keep track of Bloom’s thoughts?
II. 9. Scylla and Charybdis
Target: 28 Jun 2024
Have you read and/ or enjoyed Shakespeare’s Hamlet? What did you think of Stephen’s views?
“Every life in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
“A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway, under the portcullis barbs.”
II. 10. Wandering Rocks
Target: 01 Jul 2024
“He read the other title: Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let us see.
He read where his finger opened.
— All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on wondrous gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For Raoul!
Yes. This. Here. Try.
— Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands felt for the opulent curves inside her deshabillé.
Yes. Take this. The end.”
II. 11. Sirens
Target: 04 Jul 2024
II. 12. Cyclops
Target: 06 Jul 2024
Sophie questions when this episode is being narrated. An individual is telling us a story, but it’s important to think about who the story is being told to. One theory is that this is a story told later in the day, at another pub, to another group of drinkers. Thoughts? Do you trust his version of events? 🤔
“The fashionable international world attended en masse this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley… after the papal blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest.”
II. 13. Nausicaa
Target: 09 Jul 2024
II. 14. Oxen of the Sun
Target: 11 Jul 2024
In the meantime, here is a comprehensive and searchable list of all the books currently in our Audrey library, or coming soon! You can even search for books by your favourite Audrey guide. 💖
We are getting closer to the finish line! We're at 59% based on minutes listened or 78% based on chapters. Episode 15 is the longest one, but Sophie encourages us to not be put off by that. The whole episode is written like a play which is strange, fun, and full of the unexpected! We have also divided Episode 15 into 2 parts on the Audrey app, and will be listening to it over 4 days, followed by a catch-up day on Monday 15 July. How are you feeling as we get to the home stretch of Ulysses? 🐢🏁
II. 15. Circe
Target: 15 Jul 2024
“I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. Union for all, jew, moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.”
III. 16. Eumaeus
Target: 18 Jul 2024
What are your expectations for the plot? Is there a relationship between the concept of homecoming and notions of narrative resolution? What effect does it have on your listening, as you work your way towards the end of Ulysses, to know that some sense of reunion is rumbling away in the Homeric background to this novel?
“For which and further reasons he felt it was interest and duty even to wait on and profit by the unlooked-for occasion, though why, he could not exactly tell, being, as it was, already several shillings to the bad, having, in fact, let himself in for it.”
III. 17. Ithaca
Target: 22 Jul 2024
“New clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a human form, female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, some crumbs, some flakes of potted meat, recooked, which he removed.”
“Furthermore, silly Milly, she dreamed of having had an unspoken unremembered conversation with a horse whose name had been Joseph to whom (which) she had offered a tumblerful of lemonade which it (he) had appeared to have accepted (cf hearthdreaming cat).”
'theirhisnothis'
Share your thoughts on these words or any of your personal favourites from Episode 17!
Episode 18 is our editor Lucy’s favourite episode. We are shifting into Molly Bloom’s perspective, and we have a whole new narrator: Marcella Riordan! We recommend making the right conditions to really enjoy this final episode, whatever that means to you. 🛋️ 🏖️ 🍃
III. 18. Penelope
Target: 25 Jul 2024
“frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng the poor men that have to be out all the night from their wives and families in those roasting engines stifling it was today”
If you were to recommend one episode to a friend, on its own, which one would you choose – and what reasons would you give to convince them to try out a taste of Ulysses?
Thank you & Reviews 💛
Whether you are finishing up this week, this month or this year… We are happy for you to take Ulysses at your own pace. Please remember that these forums will always be here, so you can come back to check out the comments.
We hope you enjoyed this listen-along, and we welcome any feedback in this forum, or via the survey that will arrive in your inboxes once you finish the book.
- Review our version of Ulysses on the StoryGraph ⭐
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