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Summary: "...jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity"
Review: Fun words aplenty
Give meaning to.
Eagerly awaiting movie.
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Summary: one book compactification of the world
Review: you will, not likely, ever "read" the wake in any average sense of the word. joyce has created something amazing, a book that, rather literally, has something for everyone, yet encompasses all too much to be read by any one person (likely even himself, he spoke only a handful of the languages (estimated at upwards of fifty) he made use of in his prose). making sense of even just a paragraph may contain a slive of russian history, a nod to the great italian violin makers, and (almost without fail) contain some lesson about the catholic church burried in it somewhere. if you enjoy puzzles that require remarkable reliance on outside sources for help, this is an excellent place to spend your time. truth be told, whatever it may be literarily, what it is socially is even greater, for an attempt at a reading verily requires a group of variagated back-grounds to even begin to scratch the surface, an end-result of which is that it brings together people (particularly academics) of various backgrounds to work on a single problem. i would imagine few other ob- and/or sub- jects require such interdisciplinary coöperation. so, the next time you find yourself sitting around a table with a physicist, a musician, a historian, a linguist, and a carpenter, pull the book out and see if you can't make some sense of it. it's all there, it just takes a bit of work.
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Summary: My Bible
Review: Oh, man, it just puts me down to see how people who obviously haven't read the whole book (and more importantly read it twice, thrice and so on) slag it down, blame it a joke, a pure jumblebumble of twisted words, blame the author insane and so forth... It's not too great to hear, when I recommend it to someone: "oh, i've read it's just Joyce's joke" or "it's just puns, it's meaningless" etc. If you don't understand it, let it be, it's not for you. You've right to your opinion but...I'm reading FW for a 3rd time now, and I'm convinced it's not a novel, or poetry or even a book (although it is, in a way) but a new kind of medium. It's written vertically, like counterpoint in music. That one leaf on the last page, that the mother river is bearing on her, is the actual page you're holding; the river takes it out to the sea and to the first page. It's a spiral. I have no words to describe it; the feelings, the moods I get when reading it. You HAVE to learn to read FW. It took me 4 years of struggle before it actually struck me, and I got it. And the text hasn't ceased to suprise me since. It's always with me, wherever I go. Even if I don't even open it, because I've noticed that when I've left the book home, I'll be missing it sooner or later. Joyce insane? I don't care, but it takes a genius to write something as striking as this.
Rating: 
Summary: You let us down James
Review: James loved to play. In fact it seems he enjoyed playing alone more than he did with others. Nevertheless I give James 3 stars for his playfulness, and for showing us emphatically that rules are for fools. For the same playful spirit along with coherence, wisdom and compassion I highly recommend anything by Nobel laureate Jose Saramago, in my humble opinion a superior writer to Joyce and a writer who writes for and plays with all of us. My feeling is that wisdom, compassion, and the abilty to communicate lucidly count for a whole lot more than linguistic gymnastics, ingenious experimentation with the archetypal nature of words and impressive erudition. If there is in fact something of substance in Finnegan it will be found by very few. Try Saramago. (I am the self-appointed minister and creator of the Jose Saramago church of common sense.) With his vast knowledge of mythological tales, I'm sure that James Joyce knew that after the hero goes into the dark forest to search out, and finally attains the boon, he returns with the boon so that the world (or at least the social group) can also enjoy the benefits of that which was won. Although I do believe that Joyce found his way there, upon returning he shared that hard won boon with only a few of his buddies. Fortunately for all of us, there were those who took the boon from James and learned from that which it offered. Was James Joyce a genious? I believe he was.(however) In The Portait and his other writings he states clearly what he considers to be "proper art" and improper art", declaring that "Art" intended to teach, instruct, guide (didactic), is not "proper" to what he feels to be "ART". He pretty much stuck to that. After Dubliners and The Portrait, he didn't teach us anything. Although Ulysses and Finnegan are certainly "ingenious" creations, They are not Great books. A necessary quality for a great book is to have an affect on the reader beyond and above entertainment, fascination, self enjoyment. I'm with Saramago and Tolstoy on this one.
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Summary: A Genius Becomes a Madman
Review: Into the gobbledeegook go slipper the whipper and the trimtrammaduhdeedo, believing the glubbledubble spewed forth by a madman. What do you think, am I a genius or what? Just send me twenty bucks and I'll send you the next 600 pages. Here are three words for Joyce that he should have tried to make sense of: Ther-a-py. The guy mave have been great at one point, but he ended up a nut. And this book proves it. And also, since Joyce was such a worshiper of Aristotle's, he should have watched out for the philosopher's famous warning: "No great soul is exempt from a mixture of madness." True enough, but it is the conquest of that madness, not the surrender to it, which makes a great soul remain so. Joyce, in pitiful fashion, lost the battle, descending from a once eloquent and insightful wordsmith to a full-blown babbling idiot. It's a shame, really. And to all those stuffy professors who like to belittle the layperson by pretending to understand this book, I offer this lucid reproval: ooglebagoogle you jimmenyjammeroos. Take that, Mr. Wisemen.
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Summary: For poseurs only
Review: Boy, oh, boy is this bad. I am a Ph.D. student in English (and have a great appreciation for many of the "classics") but this is just god-awful. It's like Joyce decided to see how much crap he could possibly get away with. Naturally, people praise his "genius." The tale of the Emperor's New Clothes comes to mind....
Rating: 
Summary: like being at a circus/casino on ether!
Review: Anyone who posts about this book just wants people to see it so everyone else thinks, "whoah, he read that book, he must be smart, I want to marry him (maybe her)." God knows that's why I am posting this. To be honest, this book makes no sense. I am convinced that James Joyce was a pre-computer robot, and this book is just a list of commands that when spoken to him, caused him to do marvelous things, ranging from deflecting eart-bound comets, to baking pie. Still an interesting read. Even though it's a "literary classic", (MY GOD! A LITERARY CLASSIC! THIS BOOK MUST BE SACRED! I HAD BETTER BE SEEN READING THIS RIGHT AWAY!) it's no where near as good as many modern contemporary stories. This book ages surprisingly well, except the pages yellow slightly. That was a joke, stupid.
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Summary: What you've heard is true
Review: If you've heard anything about this novel, it was probably that it is difficult. Well, it is. Very, very difficult. It is so hard to get through, most people need more than a little help along the way. This book shows just how far a writer can push language, and just how farthe novel form will go. This is a book by an obtuse, highly literate type for other obtuse, highly literate types. If you fit the bill, dig in.
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Summary: Something for everyone here
Review: There are many people who own Finnegans Wake. I have seen these people. The book sits peacefully on a shelf, the spine of the book as immaculate as the day the book was purchased. To understand SOME of Finnegans Wake, the book needs to be falling apart due to the wear and tear of years of study. I refuse to listen to anyone who claims to understand all of the Wake, unless they have spent no less than seventeen years reading and studying it. Of course the beauty of this book is that a reader need not understand the whole thing. Joyce wrote this for the "common reader," so there must be something here that all readers can find amusing or touching in some way. Granted, the book's reputation alone frightens away some readers. We are talking about a book that has been labeled "unreadable" by some folks. Let us not forget that JR was labeled similarly, and many people thoroughly enjoyed that book.
My point, and I do have one, is that this is a book that can be read at any level possible. If I want to spend days studying each page, I can do it. If I want to read the book straight through and not care what I miss along the way, I can do it. And if I don't want to read the book at all, I can do that too. But doing that, or giving up after the first page, will offer no opportunity to find that passage that may stay with me. I hope that you will give this book a chance, and perhaps you too will find some passage or some joke that will brighten your day and make you glad that you got tangled up with this Joyce fellow in the first place.
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Summary: Fowlcat moonpie, Mister hat bender?
Review: On the bonnie, bunny, funny banks of my dreams of thee. I now ambly sweetly, oh so sweetly when the nebucadezzarrrrrrrrrrruff. King can move only one square at a time. Thyme.
Bugga Bugga woo woo. hottentot got cot in a not.
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