Rating: 
Summary: An Encyclopedia for reading Joyce's Encyclopedia
Review: "Ulysses Annotated" is an essential Book for reading, and understanding Ulysses, and the previous four reviewers are right on the mark. It is impossible, even for a well read reader to understand Joyce's allusions without this extremely well presented, and well priced, Reference book. Introduction, prefaces and notes explain how to use this book, and how it was compiled. Each episode is preceeded by a map of where the action takes place helping the reader to visualize the movements of Bloom and Stephen. Each entry is preceeded by the Chapter Number and Line Number according to the Gabler edition of "Ulysses". In addition, a fairly comprehensive index cross-references all entries. If the reader wants to find all allusions pertaining, for example, to the Book of Luke, these can be easily found. I found this Index quite useful. Personally, I found the following method best for using the book. First, to skim through the allusions, marking those of particular interest, and then laying the book side by side with the Novel and reading the Episode. As for realiability, I took Gifford and Seidman up on their offered Short Title List, and was able to find almost every reference, including "Thom's Official Directory of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Ireland for the Year 1904", and have found them to be reliable in their entries. This Book should suffice for reading, and understanding Ulysses, though many a reader may get caught up by Joyce, as I did, so that the following may be useful: Weldon Thornton: "Allusions in Ulysses", Richard Ellman: "James Joyce", Harry Blamires: "The New Bloomsday Book", Stuart Gilbert: "James Joyce's Ulysses", and of course "The Riverside Shakespeare", "The Oddyssey", and the Bible.
Rating:
Summary: An Encyclopedia for reading Joyce's Encyclopedia
Review: "Ulysses Annotated" is an essential Book for reading, and understanding Ulysses, and the previous four reviewers are right on the mark. It is impossible, even for a well read reader to understand Joyce's allusions without this extremely well presented, and well priced, Reference book. Introduction, prefaces and notes explain how to use this book, and how it was compiled. Each episode is preceeded by a map of where the action takes place helping the reader to visualize the movements of Bloom and Stephen. Each entry is preceeded by the Chapter Number and Line Number according to the Gabler edition of "Ulysses". In addition, a fairly comprehensive index cross-references all entries. If the reader wants to find all allusions pertaining, for example, to the Book of Luke, these can be easily found. I found this Index quite useful. Personally, I found the following method best for using the book. First, to skim through the allusions, marking those of particular interest, and then laying the book side by side with the Novel and reading the Episode. As for realiability, I took Gifford and Seidman up on their offered Short Title List, and was able to find almost every reference, including "Thom's Official Directory of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Ireland for the Year 1904", and have found them to be reliable in their entries. This Book should suffice for reading, and understanding Ulysses, though many a reader may get caught up by Joyce, as I did, so that the following may be useful: Weldon Thornton: "Allusions in Ulysses", Richard Ellman: "James Joyce", Harry Blamires: "The New Bloomsday Book", Stuart Gilbert: "James Joyce's Ulysses", and of course "The Riverside Shakespeare", "The Oddyssey", and the Bible.
Rating:
Summary: Break it Down
Review: All the surface details, references to mythology, history, politics, music, literature, etc, can be found in this book (Joyce's novel is not included within, just the annotations, but it still clocks in at 700 pages!). If you want to know exactly what Joyce was referring to--this is the place. However, it won't necessarily tell you what he MEANT (aheheh, some things must be left to the reader). Of course, if you've never read Ulysses you don't need to know every obscure reference. Just pick up REJOYCE or THE NEW BLOOMSDAY BOOK, which have generalized overviews of the novel. This is for the deep scholars. But as Joyce said, all he expects of his readers is that they study his works for the rest of their lives. This will keep you busy.
Rating:
Summary: Read "Ulysses" first then read "'Ulysses' Annotated"
Review: Fabulous one-volume reference work on Joyce's masterpiece. Read and reread "Ulysses" then consult "Annotated." This is the one book on "Ulysses" that I would take to the moon. Essential.
Rating: 
Summary: Thorough, but not best for the novice reader
Review: Gifford's book offers fascinating glosses and contextual annotations for Ulysses, but was not quite what I was looking for to help me with my first attempt at the book. The annotations are mostly disjoint explanations of specific allusions and references. There are other guides to Ulysses that are better suited for the novice Joyce reader, helping the reader to keep track of the plot, the progress of the Odyssey and Hamlet corelations and explaining the shifts in style through the book. This kind of hand-holding may be unnecessary for more sophisticated readers, but for my first read, it was essential!
Rating:
Summary: Thorough, but not best for the novice reader
Review: Gifford's book offers fascinating glosses and contextual annotations for Ulysses, but was not quite what I was looking for to help me with my first attempt at the book. The annotations are mostly disjoint explanations of specific allusions and references. There are other guides to Ulysses that are better suited for the novice Joyce reader, helping the reader to keep track of the plot, the progress of the Odyssey and Hamlet corelations and explaining the shifts in style through the book. This kind of hand-holding may be unnecessary for more sophisticated readers, but for my first read, it was essential!
Rating:
Summary: The essential guide
Review: I am still digesting "Ulysses." I read it while walking around Dublin a few years ago. It was marvelous to trace the steps of Leopold and Molly, and to see what they "saw," but the novel remains a distant pleasure to the reader. I must admit it is not the most accessible book ever written, but it gets four stars for its intent ... and that it is better than "Finnegan's Wake." Be warned: This book is not for the casual reader. But this annotated edition makes it all worthwhile. You'll get genuine, comprehensible guidance. If you must read "Ulysses," this edition might be most helpful.
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Odyssey?
Review: I avoided ULYSSES for many years, not sure I could understand what Joyce was up to in this novel. So, when I finally decided I had to read it, I took the time to pursue some college courses first (as an adult, let me remind you!). Without some context, I (reluctantly) still think ULYSSES remains the most difficult of novels. Yet, given what Joyce was trying to achieve in this work, I suspect this may indeed be entirely the wrong approach to this great work of literature. These courses helped me very much. And Gifford's explanation of this book also makes it much more accessible. You definitely will understand Joyce far more than you ever could on you own if you read this book. But, is this what Joyce wanted when he wrote it? I wonder.... In Frank McLynn's biography of Carl Jung, I came across an interesting item. The woman who was Joyce's financial supporter was, in fact, one of Jung's analysands. Jung often expressed his desire to analyze Joyce. When Joyce refused, Jung put considerable pressure on this woman to stop supporting Joyce, hoping thereby to influence him to conceed to Jung's interests. When this failed, Jung thereafter always refered to Joyce as "crazy." One must interpret this, I think, in the context of Jung's competition with Freud re: who would establish the greater European influence. Yet, it also reveals the intense independence of James Joyce (to say nothing of his patron). Even now, nearly 100 years later, this book remains ultimately incomprehesible. Let me ask you...why is it that you can't understand Joyce without someone explaining it to you? I'm in the same boat, so don't take me wrong. This man was the ultimate individual. As such, he stands out in the 20th century. While I may agree that some of Joyce's other works are far more experimental, we are (nevertheless) still left with...ULYSSES. There is more here than anyone can explain. So, can any of us achieve this kind of individualism in our own lives? Probably not, I expect.
Rating:
Summary: A Modern Odyssey?
Review: I avoided ULYSSES for many years, not sure I could understand what Joyce was up to in this novel. So, when I finally decided I had to read it, I took the time to pursue some college courses first (as an adult, let me remind you!). Without some context, I (reluctantly) still think ULYSSES remains the most difficult of novels. Yet, given what Joyce was trying to achieve in this work, I suspect this may indeed be entirely the wrong approach to this great work of literature. These courses helped me very much. And Gifford's explanation of this book also makes it much more accessible. You definitely will understand Joyce far more than you ever could on you own if you read this book. But, is this what Joyce wanted when he wrote it? I wonder.... In Frank McLynn's biography of Carl Jung, I came across an interesting item. The woman who was Joyce's financial supporter was, in fact, one of Jung's analysands. Jung often expressed his desire to analyze Joyce. When Joyce refused, Jung put considerable pressure on this woman to stop supporting Joyce, hoping thereby to influence him to conceed to Jung's interests. When this failed, Jung thereafter always refered to Joyce as "crazy." One must interpret this, I think, in the context of Jung's competition with Freud re: who would establish the greater European influence. Yet, it also reveals the intense independence of James Joyce (to say nothing of his patron). Even now, nearly 100 years later, this book remains ultimately incomprehesible. Let me ask you...why is it that you can't understand Joyce without someone explaining it to you? I'm in the same boat, so don't take me wrong. This man was the ultimate individual. As such, he stands out in the 20th century. While I may agree that some of Joyce's other works are far more experimental, we are (nevertheless) still left with...ULYSSES. There is more here than anyone can explain. So, can any of us achieve this kind of individualism in our own lives? Probably not, I expect.
Rating:
Summary: Great, with some room for improvement
Review: I used this book from about pg 200 of Ulysses onward, and I think it's just about indispensable. There should not be any embarrassment in this: unless you know Latin, German, French, Hebrew (together with a good cross-section of literature from all these languages), Catholic & Jewish culture, English literature more or less entire, and (hardest of all) Dublin slang, culture, politics, and all the knick-knacks of daily life from 1904, Ulysses presents many baffling passages. This book helps out with all these things, plus plenty of other stuff: myths, songs, internal reference cross-indexing (for those of us who can't remember that Stephen Daedalus thought of the same Latin quotation 600 pages earlier), Joyce's basic scheme for each section, and more. There are two failings, and they are minor: (1) there are still plenty of obscure words and phrases that aren't annotated (the introduction acknowledges this) and conversely (2) there are a number of things that don't need annotations that get them (particularly galling are the annotations that simply tell you that they don't know what Joyce is talking about either). Still, an essential reference, and pretty entertaining in its own right (like flipping through an encyclopedia or Brewer's Phrase & Fable).
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