Rating: 
Summary: Read it standing up.
Review: I love to read, yes. But even more I love to read Finnegan's Wake. Over and over again. Measureless is the blood that has seeped from my fingernails made raw by return trips down Joyce's epic memory lane. Skip the reviews of those naysayers who insist that the story is incomprehensible dross, the brainchild of a madman who simply proved to be diligent at setting words, in random order, to paper. Ignore the criticasters whose idea of a good time is to make the preposterous claim that they, too, could create a "masterpiece" given a typewriter and a will to live long enough to persist in hammering away arbitrarily for several hundred hours. You must dig below these stale, self-aggrandizing potshots (however whimsically they are worded) and discover for yourself what lies at the heart of this new breed of phantom, a novel about nothing for nobody that encompasses everything and everyone, all the while twirling, twirling, twirling toward a tympanic truth tantamount to a ticking timebomb in a telltale town. For the uninitiated I provide a plot summary: A man, Finnegan, of course, is mired in a dead end job with no immediate end in sight. He does what any sane red-blooded Protestant male in this hopeless situation would do, he builds a rowboat. After he hunts down a working pair of oars (a thankless task if there ever was one) he sets out to sea. His exodus starts promisingly enough as he is spurred on by the unsolicited encouragement of a shadowy figure (albeit an eerily jolly one!) on the dock. "Have a safe trip, dear." The consequences of his boat taking to water is a familiar one (and one alluded to in a title chock full of foreshadowy goodness). Wake. The greatest thing ever.
Rating: 
Summary: Fractile Wings
Review: ...fall if you but will, rise you must
Rating:
Summary: 1
Review: 1
Rating:
Summary: The greatest story ever told..except for the story of Christ
Review: Fantastic yet dismal, chaste yet erotic, this is a premonition of things to come. I did not enjoy reading it, but it is, without a doubt, the greatest endevor literature has conceived. This is not for the weak or the weak-hearted, and even those strong enough to get through it will inevitably throw up everything that's inside of them and have to start from scratch, but it will be worth it. I feel Joyce's writing hand still throbbing with life, and I still feel the amorous tongue of Finnegans Wake deep within my throat. If I were to be exiled to the moon and could only take one thing with me, it would be Barth's "The Sot-Weed Factor", but if I could take another thing, there's an outside chance it would be this book. That's how great it is.
Rating:
Summary: FW is an intelligence trap.
Review: I believe a couple of the recent reviewers have it right. Finnegan's Wake is the closest analogy in real life to the endless stream of puzzles encoded in the beam of light in Piers Anthony's sci fi novel 'Macroscope'. Most of us page through it, think "That's nice" or "So what?", put it down, and go on with our own lives. Some few, endowed--for better or worse--with the right brand of intelligence, are captivated by it, get plugged into it in Borg-like manner, and can't get out of it. End result: no more individual life. Still others just write reviews of it here. Who's to say which are the truly sentient beings?
Rating:
Summary: Will be forgotten
Review: FW will soon be forgotten because soon (a century?) no one will be able to understand it. As it is, only a few thousand people in the entire world bother with it now because it is too difficult and arduous to read. Reading FW is more like a language project than a pleasant reading experience. Some people like to work out mathematical theorems. Some may like working out FW. I do not. With each year, because of the way language changes, FW will become more and more incomprehensible so that there will eventually be more people around who read and understand Old Norse than this novel. Joyce, who loved languages, should have known that. As it is, he wrote a novel with its own built in destruction. He consigned it to what is a certain and inevitably obscure death.
Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: Imagine John Lennon's nonsense lyrics for "I am a walrus" going on for hundreds of pages. I think maybe a hundred or so people in the entire world might enjoy digging through this but the rest of us can put this one aside. Don't fall for that snobby "Well, it's not for lazy or stupid people" nonsense. This is nothing more than a self absorbed word puzzle for those who do not have lives to live but have plenty of time to waste deciphering this. Maybe, one day, if I am ever in a crippling accident and am confined to a wheelchair with little to do but figure this one out, I might attempt reading through it again. Everyone else, stay away!!
Rating:
Summary: A diamond in the rough
Review: The strange format of this book is often intimidating to people(myself included), but once you learn how to get past that and decipher this work, it is extremely enjoyable. I have re-read it again and again, and every time I find something new to enjoy. My advice is to read aloud parts that don't make sense to you.
Rating: 
Summary: One thing you need to know
Review: Doesn't anybody get it? It's impossible to rate this book. It isn't even a novel in any conventional sense. I'm not one of those rhapsodizing academics who claim that all the stars in the Milky Way aren't enough for FW. You can't assign any number of stars at all, finite or infinite. Review--how can I--I've only read the book fifteen times. This book is a net to trap linear thinkers--Joyce probably listed about thirty thousand words (shoelaces, chalices, trees, wine, windmills, etc. etc.) and eight hundred names (Stanislaus, Mary, Nora, Adam, Eve, Anna etc. etc.), and came up with all the conceivable associations between them.
Rating:
Summary: joygrantit!
Review: I've read "Finnegans Wake" nine times. Verdict? I dunno, let me read it again. When you read Joyce, you get Joyce. Stick with trash if you're a normal. So it's unusual. So what! His books are what the greatest mind of the 20th C. have left us: so be it! But be forewarned: his world can be addicting.
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