[circlecity]

Joyce and Faulkner are the most overrated authors ever.

[NotSoFreeStater]

I’ve tried twice to read it. Maybe I’ll try again this year. Not like there’s anything on TV.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark.

[SamAdams76]

I did force myself through much of "Infinite Jest". I like David Foster Wallace's shorter works. For instance, his essay on cruise ships is one of my favorite things to read. But this book was just hard for me to get into.

Never tried reading "Ulysses" but I have it on the shelf. As for "Moby Dick", I've read it twice and plan to read it a third time.

[kennedy]

I managed to struggle my way through the whole thing when I was in college, over 40 years ago. All I remember about Ulysses was that I thought it was incredibly boring. Moby Dick was just as long but far more interesting to read.

[ought-six]

James Joyce, the most over-rated writer of the 20th century. Just awful.

[John O]

So you’re telling us that the book is NOT about that ancient Greek guy?

Then why bother with it?

[ml/nj]

Russell Baker (late humorist for the NY Times) once wrote that no one under 35 should be allowed to read Moby Dick. I was supposed to read it in 11th grade. I couldn't even get through the Classic Comicbook version.

But that Baker column appeared when I was 36 so I thought I would give Moby Dick a try again. What a great book, it is!

ML/NJ

[PUGACHEV]

I dunno, Ulysses is one of my favorite novels. I first read it in my twenties, and it changed my life in so many subtle ways, all for the good. Not a day goes by when I don't recall some odd line from it: "Have you got cold feet about the Cosmos" "It's as uncertain as a baby's bottom", "He's a caution to a rattlesnake", and of course "The ineluctable modality of the visible". Nor since reading Ulysses have I ever looked up at the night sky or seen the lightening of the horizon before sunrise without remembering "Alone, what did Bloom feel? The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Réaumur: the incipient intimations of proximate dawn.”

[Borges]

Your favorite.

[Honest Nigerian]

Is Ulysses the kind of book that is good to listen to, instead of reading? I mean, when you are in the car, or waiting for the doctor appointment.
Here is a funny idea: instead of “On Hold” music, businesses could stream books like Moby Dick and Ulysses (suggest others if you like).

[jimwatx]

You think Ulysses is difficult try Finnigan’s Wake.

[PGR88]

That was interesting. I’ve seen many attempt to analyze “Ulysses,” but far fewer dare to approach “Finnegans Wake.”

[DeFault User]

Applauding your namesake, I always found that Jorge Luis Borges and even Henri Bergson were a lot more fascinating to read and ponder than James Joyce or even Proust.