Rating: 
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: Joyce's Ulysses stands as a mountain in the centre of the wasteland of 20th century fiction. It is the landmark that reaches into the pages of every novel written since, it is polymath.But it's a darned difficult read. Each chapter is written not just in a new form, but in a completely new style. It demands a shift in mindset as one progresses through the book. In some cases that shift is required from sentence to sentence, or indeed from word to word. It's not a novel for the casual reader. To get anything out of it, one must be experienced. The annotations do help, but a broad knowledge of international literature, and indeed international language would be a boon when working one's way through the time-honoured pages. Personally, I'd buy it just for the 'Ithaca' chapter. It's pure art (or science, in fact), and in my humble opinion an incredible achievement in anti-narrative that is unsurpassed. Enough sycophancy. Ulysses is glorious, and that is truth.
Rating:
Summary: Oh man oh man, this is really lovely
Review: Wow. I have started this book three times, at about two-year intervals, also reading small parts of it separately at various times, but I finally finished it straight through and I can't believe how great it is, I never expected this, though I've been half-obsessed with Joyce since I bought Finnegans Wake with perfect serendipity in seventh grade because I thought it had "words I don't know." [Back to Ulysses] I've always loved the beginning, but it really gets a lot better past the halfway point, with Nighttown and the Ithaca chapter especially, and the thing that struck me most was the absolute loveliness of the ending. It's bloody famous and often quoted, but you don't get a sense until you've read the whole thing that where other books leave you begging for more or hoping them to come to an end more quickly, this ending is *perfectly* satisfying. [You can find more rigorous criticism elsewhere. This is my emotional response.]
Rating: 
Summary: This is a Great Book
Review: The last 200+ pages of this book were fantastic, including the night scenes in town. I have not read English poetry and therefore was lost for an earier 200 pages. Joyce's references to Parnell were interesting, as was the singular reference to U.S. Grant. Leopold Bloom is an example, I suppose, of the exception to the single mindedness of these Irish people. Dublin was a lovely city, however, clearly not diverse enough for Joyce. I liked this book for the exposure given me to the English language. Joyce was a master with the pen (as was Paul). Do I read Finnegan's Wake? How can I not?
Rating:
Summary: Joyce was the one true literary genius of the century.
Review: Only on my 3rd or 4th attempt did i settle down and finally read this book. I actually saw Joseph Strick's 1967 film recently and although only a fraction of the book makes it to the screen, i found it more informative than any 'guide' you care to buy to help you. The range of linguistic styles, the mindboggling clever plotting, the dazzling knowledge,the unbelievably human sexual passages and above all the spectacular humour are for me all the elements that make Ulysses the definitive vision of how words make up a story that can depict the our condition. All I can say is that I got to Ulysses having already worked my way through the later innovators of the century - Pynchon,Beckett, Gaddis,Coover,Burroughs etc etc and it turns out that almost everything they have said can be found in Ulysses, and Joyce is always more touching, more beautiful, and more anything-you-care-to-mention.
Rating:
Summary: the minor proves the major
Review: Is Ulysses the greatest novel of the century? Yes, surpassing all other literary endeavors in scope, depth, and intelligence. Is it unintelligible? No, nor is it undecidable, but only pointedly, significantly ambiguous. Why this quality? So that the reader must work as hard (if not harder)than the author himself did when composing the novel. And it is a composition. Why should the reader work? So that he/she might learn something substantial; so that he/she will be able to view the world with a new mind's eye. Does it suffice to read the book only once and quickly? Nope. Diagnosis for anyone who assigns the book less than five stars: idler; incapable of intense intellectual effort; probably likes vonnegut.
Rating:
Summary: The 'classic'
Review: I don't know if I understood Ulysses as a 'classic' except in the sense that it is an exercise for 'erudition'. Nevertheless, with the assistance of a Cliff Notes edition I was able to go through the whole length of the book and actually understand what was going on. In all, it wasn't too bad. I know this is a seminal work and has influenced a lot of writers, as a novel itself it cannot get 5 stars though.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly crafted gibberish
Review: James Joyce turn a left turn from Tolstoy's idea of elegantly revealing the stream of consciousness, unto pouring it by the bucket on the reader's head. Unfortunately, thousand of less competent hacks have followed in his footsteps making the latter half of the 20th century the garbage dump of literature.
Rating:
Summary: one of the greatest books ever written
Review: whoever gives this book less that six stars out of five is ver likely to be just not mature enough to handle serious literature
Rating:
Summary: The model for all others
Review: Every author who has either used the stream of consciousness style or been labeled anything near "postmodern" is probably just following in the footsteps of this novel and very few have ever come close. Joyce shows here that to get the technique down right you need more than technique, even more than a command of the English language, you need a good viewpoint. And Ulysses has many, from Bloom to his wife Molly to Dedalus, every person is detailed through their thoughts and words with enough dimension to make you wonder if this is a novel or a true account. Is it difficult to read? Yup. Most parts you can at least figure out what's going on but some, like the play section toward the middle, at times makes absolutely no sense (and what is up with that, is it a dream or something), but some parts that you think would be impossible, like the massive sequence at the end with Molly not only is nearly compulsively readable but quite beautiful at the same time. It's weird to say this but at times I wanted the book to be longer. Simply put, one of, if not THE greatest novel ever to come out of the English language (though I'm a Pynchon fan first . . . sorry), one of those few novels that everyone should at least attempt, if only to immerse yourself in the complexity of the language.
Rating:
Summary: You don't have to understand everything
Review: Everyone seems to agree that this is a great novel, except for a few, and I don't have time to read all the reviews, but I would say one thing: you don't have to completely understand Ulysses to appreciate it. Most people who tell you that they understand the book are lying. Joyce was a genius--not in a way that he was a "really good" writer, but in a way that he simply had more brain power than almost all of us. He pushed himself for years and years to write this book, and he is a genius, so why should we be able to understand this book in one or two readings? You might get the gist of it after a few readings, a good professor to guide you through, and a strong literary background. But it doesn't matter if you have your MA in English or not, Joyce's intricacies will, for most of us, remain elusive. Not understanding Ulysses doesn't mean you're stupid it means you are human. I don't know why people are suprised that they don't "get it" when they read it. Most of us will probably never be able to grasp the brilliance of Mozart's music or Einstein's theories either, we have to kind of trust people that know how good they are. After a while we may be able to see why they are so good too. It's curious that people would hold literature to a lower bar than those disciplines. If you're not a rocket scientist, chances are you're probably not going to pick up a book on rocket science and expect to understand it.
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