Ulysses

Rating:
Summary: James Joyce Needed an Editor
Review: How could a book like Ulysses ever have made it to print? The grammar is so disjointed as to make it nearly impossible to read. Additionally, the point-of-view and writing style change in nearly every chapter after the sixth. It should also be mentioned that the story is not very well paced. The book is well over 600 pages long, but the events in the story appear to take place over the course of just a single day.

I have heard numerous people praise this book, but that would seem to be largely posturing because the story is lost under the weight of inadequate editing.

Rating:
Summary: Ulysses by James Joyce
Review: I wish I wouldn't have to rate this book. I never read Ulysses, actually. I only browsed through it and was stunned by the blasphemy in it. I would like to warn people who consider buying this book. I could never pray the Lord's Prayer and read this book. I know many people accept blasphemy because they feel it belongs in the book to describe the personalities in it more vividly, but when I saw the things James Joyce wrote about God and Jesus, I knew that was way out of line for me. Some things just cross the line no matter what the story.

Rating:
Summary: I agree with Virginia Woolf
Review: Woolf was right. Joyce was obsessed with being, hm, obscure. I have read every book he wrote (not that many) and studied him at length. It has not helped. I cannot admire anyone who thinks we should have to work so hard to figure out what he was talking about. Normal people can't enjoy Joyce and I think this is a travesty. For all the hard work I had to do to figure out what he was talking about, I did not get one moment's enjoyment. Down with pretentious male modernists who feel we should all spend our lives "working" to unveil the "true meaning" in their words. For all you Joyceans out there who like to mock the "commoners" for not "getting" Joyce, I am working on a PhD in English--and I "get" him just fine, thank you. And I nonetheless refuse to give in to the pressure to like him. Brilliant as he may have been, he was full of himself. In my mind, these two qualities alone (brilliance and arrogance) should not get anyone's novels on the must-read lists.

Rating:
Summary: A GOOD BOOK
Review: This was a good book, one that took quire some time to read. Not one I couldn't put down, but one I knew I had to finished.

If you want to another read a book that goes straight to your heart, read Stolen Moments by Barbara Jeanne Fisher. . .It is a beautiful story of unrequited love. . .for certain the love story of the nineties. I intended to give the book a quick read, but I got so caught up in the story that I couldn't put the book down. From the very beginning, I was fully caught up in the heart-wrenching account of Julie Hunter's battle with lupus and her growing love for Don Lipton. This love, in the face of Julie's impending death, makes for a story that covers the range of human emotions. The touches of humor are great, too, they add some nice contrast and lighten things a bit when emotions are running high. I've never read a book more deserving of being published. It has rare depth. Julie's story will remind your readers that life and love are precious and not to be taken for granted. It has had an impact on me, and for that I'm grateful. Stolen Moments is written with so much sensitivity that it made me want to cry. It is a spellbinder. What terrific writing. Barbara does have an exceptional gift! This book was edited by Lupus specialist Dr. Matt Morrow too, and has the latest information on that disease. ..A perfect gift for someone who started college late in life, fell in love too late in life, is living with any illness, or trying to understand a loved one who is. . .A gift to be cherished forever.

Rating:
Summary: a triumph of content
Review: This is a brilliant novel. And it will find its salvation not because it is a triumph of form--which it is. Admittedly it packs intellectual poetry into every syllable, carefully constructed. But this means nothing today. Joyce was the only modernist who seemed to know that eventually the modernist form would fade and people would just wonder why The Wasteland is so damn hard to read. This book will find a salvation because it is more classical than any other book in the 20th century canon. And because it is a realist work before it is anything else.

Anyone who doubts that Joyce is a realist writer needs to take a glance at Dubliners. It is, more than likely, the realist tint of Ulysses that made upper crust elitists like Woolf dislike it. In his failed poet Stephen, Joyce offers a critique of the aesthete lifestyle. His hero, Bloom, is an impotent Jew suffering in sexual silence for the sake of his wife. The spiritual motivation of the book is a near-illiterate woman. There's little for the oversexed anti-semites of 1930s Paris to appreciate here.

Joyce wrote this book for his wife. It is his gift to her; fill in the details, ask yourself why that particular day, and you will see how Ulysses is perhaps the most profound love ode in the English language since "The Divine Comedy." It abolishes identity, language, politics, ethnicity and class in favor of a simple love poem. Read and be moved, but never say it is without content.

Rating:
Summary: A GOOD BOOK
Review: I thought this was a good book, but hard to keep interested in for long periods of time. I am glad I read it and finished it. If you want to read a book that goes straight to your heart, read Stolen Moments by Barbara Jeanne Fisher. . .It is a beautiful story of unrequited love. . .for certain the love story of the nineties. I intended to give the book a quick read, but I got so caught up in the story that I couldn't put the book down. From the very beginning, I was fully caught up in the heart-wrenching account of Julie Hunter's battle with lupus and her growing love for Don Lipton. This love, in the face of Julie's impending death, makes for a story that covers the range of human emotions. The touches of humor are great, too, they add some nice contrast and lighten things a bit when emotions are running high. I've never read a book more deserving of being published. It has rare depth. Julie's story will remind your readers that life and love are precious and not to be taken for granted. It has had an impact on me, and for that I'm grateful. Stolen Moments is written with so much sensitivity that it made me want to cry. It is a spellbinder. What terrific writing. Barbara does have an exceptional gift! This book was edited by Lupus specialist Dr. Matt Morrow too, and has the latest information on that disease. ..A perfect gift for someone who started college late in life, fell in love too late in life, is living with any illness, or trying to understand a loved one who is. . .A gift to be cherished forever.

Rating:
Summary: not the best ever!
Review: I don't get how this book can be considered the best ever. I am a good reader and I found it almost impossible to read. The sentences(if they can even be called sentences) are all convoluted and then it breaks out in play format-what the hell is up with that? I'm sure it has tons of allegorical layers but whats the good of that when you can't tell what the hell is even going on.

It seems that for a book to be considered great it has to have layers of meanings hidden that are very hard to figure out. But I'm sure that half of these "great" books are written with a meaning intended by the author and then the critics and readers assume that there is some great meaning behind everything so they make up something just to make sure they don't look stupid. These made up themes are then told to people who tell others and so on.

Over all not worth the reading!

Rating:
Summary: Baffling at first, then slowly certainly wonderful
Review: I had heard about Ulysses all through my literature-loving youth. When I was 16 or so, I tried to find Ulysses in the St. Cloud Technical High School Library. It was listed in the card catalog, but it was never on the shelves. Finally, I asked the prim-and-proper old biddy librarian where the book was. She fairly shuddered and asked me with a cockeyed combination of excitement and accusation "why" I wanted to read it. I told her I'd heard it was a great book and so please hand it over. Sure enough, it was in a back room and the old battleaxe crept forth with the book, jacketed in a beautiful red. At home I opened it and tried to make sense out of the first page. I dipped around in it and finally threw it hard as I could against the wall of my bedroom. "This is gibberish junk!" I said to myself. Later, I kept hearing more about the book and thought, "well, maybe I'm just dumb," which really teed me off. One day I found a book called "Re-Joyce" by Anthony Burgess (of Clockwork Orange fame). He was a Joyce fanatic and wrote a book about how to read Ulysses. And so I read Re-Joyce as I read Ulysses and, wonder of wonders, what an experience! That was back in 1965. I still read Ulysses. It's the one book I re-read more than any other. Oh, and when I look back, way back to my high school library, I know now how Joyce would have roared with merriment at that biddy librarian. He would have been honored in his sly way to see his naughty book kept behind that bun-haired spinster's iron petticoats. Don't give up on Ulysses! Get the Burgess book as a guide, or the Gilbert guide. But don't give up. Riches, great riches, await you!

Rating:
Summary: The book to read
Review: This is a project, and nobody reads this in a week. Take a year (or 10 years :-)), only this is a must for anyone who reads.

The finest example of literature we have.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonder--of Convention
Review: To understand something of "Ulysses," one must firstlook at its publication in a historical perspective. Brought out inprint in a time when the banning of books was common practice in the war against "obscenity," Mr. Joyce's work was championed by all liberals everywhere--not so much on its artistic merits, but, rather, due to what it symbolized for them: The struggle of the artist against the State. As for the book itself,the writing was almost secondary. In fact, it was not just derided by philistines; many noteworthy authors--among whom number Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein--questioned its originality and its effectiveness. (For certainly, most of its now-thought "original techniques" had been used before by other writers to far better effect!) That is to say, "Ulysses" became more important for what it was SUPPOSED to represent than for what it actually was. As time passed and young people of a more liberal turn acceded to positions of social authority, "Ulysses" began to be, almost defiantly, hyped as a modernist masterpiece. This, of course, to tweek the nose of the older generation more than to herald a legitimate work of Art. As a result, whole generations of subsequent Americans have had imposed on them the the ready-made opinion that "Ulysses" holds an unassaible position in the Letters of the World; for, certainly, they fear to have attached to themselves the tag "Vulgarian" if they dare to express their own thoughts on this grossly over-rated book. No, truly, "Ulysses" is a triumph of propoganda that, when taken out of its historical context and judged squarely, falls flat, resuming its true proportions on an artistic level given it by great writers of the time: A dry, pedantic and boring farrago.