Will I love Ulysses?

Why did I love this book? Number one, I finished it!--with a lot of help from an online course offered through the Community of Writers in the High Sierras and led by author Peter Orner. I also listened to an audio version of the novel as I read it, which was tremendously helpful. There are no chapter headings in Ulysses and so many characters. The dialogue is not punctuated as such and is intermingled with the internal thoughts of not always identified narrators. There are Latin phrases. Every line contains some obscure literary, historical, or Irish reference.

Ulysses was… show more.

This book has a forbidding reputation, but I was lucky enough to come to it in my teens, not knowing I was supposed to be intimidated by it. Instead, I fell instantly and irretrievably in love with the mind-expanding potential of language and story.

It's about a city (Dublin), about a single day (June 16, 1904), and about a million other things besides. It’s a game, a challenge, a marvel, and I particularly love the way it uses time as a constant motif, as Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom weave their way through Dublin across the course of the day,… show more.

Ulysses may be one of the best books ever written, though it is also one of the most challenging.

In exchange for the effort, you are rewarded with Joyce’s unparalleled command of English and his invention of stream-of-conscious writing. I listened to a set of lectures, one on each chapter, as I made my way through the book, which made all the difference. There are written guides as well.

Ulysses takes place on a single day in Dublin. Each chapter reveals a different aspect of Joyce’s genius. For example, in one chapter, a baby is born, and Joyce starts the… show more.

I received my first copy of this iconic book, a Bodley Head hardcover edition for my eighteenth birthday from a girl who worked in libraries and knew I liked books. I found the novel tough going initially, having been enraptured earlier by Joyce’s short stories Dubliners which were far more straightforward and accessible. But I went back to Ulysses at different stages in my life, reading different editions, determined to finish the book which I did three times and was glad I did as I learned more about the workings of this novel, loosely based on Homer’s epic, the more… show more.