You're welcome. But i havent read it so i have nothing to give.

If you enjoy reading about urination, you'll love Ulysses.

yes, Putin33 -- I was an English major way back in 1989 ... lots of pee if I recall

but what i know is that much better is "The Dubliners"

Funnily enough, I'm also currently reading this for class (though I planned on reading it later anyway, when I could afford the papeback version I wanted.)

Aaaaand...

Yeah.
Haven't read much of it.
I've got two essays due tomorrow and a position paper on the UN due in a couple of hours.

Haven't had time to ready much of it. :)

But I LOVED its namesake, "The Odyssey" is a Top 10 read on my list, and Odysseus is cool...and James Joyce's "The Dead" was interesting, if a bit slow in spots...so we shall see.

James Joyce is a bore. I struggle to get into any of his pieces.

I was hoping you would respond obi, I thought you might be familiar with Joyce. The Dead is an interesting piece, as is Dubliners on the whole. I'm looking forward to finally finishing Ulysses, it's been on my shelf for a while.

Putin33: If you've read the text, I'm disappointed that's all you could offer.

Sorry I find stream of thought writing painful to read. Couldn't make it through. I also don't much care his overwrought and showy writing style. He is Salman Rushdie with bathroom breaks. I'm not much of a fan of plotless, punctuation-less Modernist literature.

That's a shame - Mrs Dalloway is great.
I have to read Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses next week, so I'll get back to you on Rushdie :)

The only thing I know about Mrs. Dalloway is the references to it in The Hours.

That's a shame! The Hours was born out of Mrs Dalloway. Mrs Dalloway, in my (and many other's) opinion, is a great landmark piece of literature. It's definitely worth reading, even if just to have an awareness and to be able to criticise - as Putin has done.

I'm painfully aware of the number of "classics" that I have never read, and borrowed Ulysses from the library a couple of months ago. God, what steaming pile of turd that book was. I acknowledge that perhaps I should have read The Odyssey first but I'm not sure that knowing the parallels with Homer's work would have improved the experience for me. Definitely the most disappointing book I can remember reading in the past 10 years, at least!

P.S. I'm a bit worried I might not have made myself clear - I really didn't like Ulysses.

I have read a lot of classics, but there are way more classics to read than free hours in a lifetime to read them. Right now I'm working on Les Miserables. I've read everything Dickens ever wrote. Pretty much all of Dumas' novels. Most of Shakespeare (haven't gone through all his sonnets) and for a little newer classics: all of Poe and Conan-Doyle and Wells and most of the established American authors like Steinbeck and Hemingway, Twain and Hawthorn, Sinclair and Updike... You get the idea. I just haven't gotten to any of James Joyce's works.

Haven't read it but I remember having to read an anthology of Joyce's work in my senior year of high school. The Dead was good.
I suppose Joyces' pieces are fantastic if you're really into literature and all the nuances, subtleties, etc. -- as I understand it his use of symbolism is widely regarded as some of the best ever.
I'm with Putin on the stream of consciousness stuff though (and modernism in general). I haven't read Mrs. Dalloway, but To The Lighthouse was probably the most tediously boring piece of literature I've ever had the misfortune to come across.

If you are new to Joyce I really recommend reading "The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses" or a similar guide. There is simply too much depth in the work to take in on the first read.