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I have wanted to read Ulysses for years, and couldn't make it past a few pages. Anything I wanted to read, I had to read out loud to understand. I finally decided to try it as an audiobook, and that really helped me pay attention. Then a friend suggested a few companion books, and that really helped. I took a break to catch myself up in them and then started reading a chapter (aka episode, section) in Ulysses followed by the companion chapters in all three books. Most of the time, they were necessary, and that explains why this book doesn't get 5 stars. Joyce just tries too hard some of the time to make clever connections to stylized rhetoric, literary history, or the political climate. Some of the time, it made sense in the story, especially considering that he was trying to write it in parallel to the Odyssey. That was probably enough of a challenge without the rest of it, in my humble opinion. Like accessories... he could have examined the novel and removed something before sending it out the door.

I also think you can't really fully understand Ulysses without having read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I have read it, my senior year of high school, which would be fifteen years ago now. Stephan Dedalus's story just won't be as clear without knowing his history, as well as his understanding of what he thinks his life is meant for. I also wish I had read Dubliners first, since all the minor characters mentioned in Ulysses have had their stories explained in those stories. It will be fun to go back and read them now, but I wish I'd known that information while I read it.

That said, I really enjoyed the main character of Leopold Bloom, a Jewish ad man living in Dublin, with a wife who is in bed most of the time we see her. Joyce does a good job as presenting his characters as real people, with beliefs, inconsistencies, and quirks. Some of the chapters were particularly enjoyable in audio - The Wandering Rocks, Circe, and Penelope, the surprise last chapter that had me blushing and giggling. I imagine the reason more people don't reference it more often is that they never make it there, but it was an incredibly realistic portrayal of a woman's internal thought process for the early 1900s.

This book is not for the faint of heart, for many different reasons. It has been banned because of its sexual content. It has been thrown across the room because of its frustrating methods. It can't be skimmed or hurried. If you're going to do it, I highly recommend also finding these books (I will be writing longer reviews of each):

The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses
James Joyce's Ulysses
James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays

I have been blogging my way through the novel, and will post this review before I blog about the last two chapters. You can dive deeper into my thoughts .