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I read this when I was around sixteen in conjunction with Ulysses Annotated in its entirety, because I really wanted to "get" all the references and "understand" what Joyce was on about. I do remember bits of it, and I'm not saying this was the worst way to approach Ulysses, but I guess when I read it I had a very adolescent agenda about proving to myself how smart I was, which somehow was linked in my mind with the reading of this book (and, I guess, the annotations).

Honestly, I probably remember more about Ulysses Annotated than I do about Ulysses, which isn't all bad. There's some interesting information in there, and now that I'm hanging around with an Irishman I am grateful for the intro to aspects of Irish culture and historical figures such as Cromwell and Parnell.

That said, while it was an understandable developmental stage, testing one's cleverness by trying "conquer" an Important Book is probably not the best circumstance for enjoying any work of literature.

These days I've put away most of my childish ideas about trying to impress myself with my literacy and intelligence (though there may be one exception [it involves Web 2.0:]). I'd like to reread this book, to see what it's actually like and whether I can get more out of the experience, now that trying to be so smart is an aspiration I've pretty safely relinquished.