Rating: 
Summary: Ridiculous- a waste of time and effort
Review: I can't see why everybody, even if they don't understand Finnegan's Wake, proclaims it to be a 'masterpiece' and that it encapsulates 'the entirety of human history'. How absurd. This piece of inconsequential nonsense may mean something to James Joyce or 'Neeborg' from the planet 'Zobtreeg', but not to any rational person who doesn't pretend to be intelligent or philosophical. I paid seventeen dollars for a book that is puportedly a 'classic' that discusses all sorts of important issues. I read the first page and thought "this is ridiculous", so I put it back on my shelf and got a book that actually makes sense. Irish history/literature professors and well versed people that boast about having Ph.D's and masters degrees, in my opinion, use this book as a vehicle to sound smart and convey all these ideas that could not possibly be derived from the actual text. Therefore, I've formulated my OWN little theory about what this book is about: it's about nothing. It's just words that mean nothing, so that people can make whatever they like out of it, and smart people can sound smart and dumb people can listen to them, then transcribe the smart people's words verbatim, and sound smart! That little theory makes just about as much sense as Finnegan's Wake and all of the professing Professors that devote their lives to sounding intelligent, when, ultimately, Finnegan's Wake is just a bunch of nonsense. Don't get me wrong- I'm a nice guy (don't worry- I'm from Australia)
Rating: 
Summary: chuckle don't fret
Review: There is, I think, one prerequisite for enjoying this book. Be open to it. Whatever legendary reputation is attached to it, is there because it is, in any sense, an extraordinary book. Understanding a plotless novel that a positively brilliant man spend over a decade on is not a very realistic goal, I think, when reading it. However, enjoying it is no hard task at all. Reading it attentively, not meticulously, left me smiling all the time. People complaining about its inaccessibility are, I think, too preoccupied with assuring their own intelligence by trying to understand everything.
Rating:
Summary: A monument
Review: Remember when you were really young and 'grew out' of having pictures in your books? Well Joyce has 'grown out' of the English language, the great genius of literature evolved past all boundries and greater a work that traps you. Inescapably profound Inescapably brillant
Rating: 
Summary: As wrong as you can get
Review: "Finnegans Wake", the central scripture of devout Joyceanites is, as far as could read into it, a monument to Joyce's artistic enterprise & simultaneously an elephantine failure. Briefly: 1. Books are written to be read. They are to be read in a human language, not in a privately constructed enigmatic mishmash one can decipher, but the process of deciphering leads to...nowhere. Even turgid & clumsy philosophical authors like Hegel or Heidegger had something to convey, a "vision" of reality. "Finnegans Wake", on the other hand is a carefully constructed labyrinth of "perennial" themes, inducing in reader's mind...epiphany ?...wisdom ?...emotions ?.. no, unfortunately only boredom. This is a book built on books & mythic ( rationally catalogued ) patterns, but not a living creation nor a powerful myth itself. There is something unpleasant, musty, simply *wrong* about this novel....In other words, I experienced this "novel" as Joyce's prolonged ( over almost 20 years ) "masturbation" on his private, but in no way universal, fantasies. 2. What are the merits of this book ? Let's see: a) is it cognitively strong ? Do I perceive the world in enhanced or expanded way after reading it ? Plato, Nietzsche, Augustine, Shankara, Jung ? No. b) is it aesthetically satisfying ? No. Apart from a few "musical" passages, this is, compared to Joyce's earlier work, a sad spectacle of a "noble mind o'erthrown" ( or ensnared by its own projections- something similar to the Tibetan Book of the Dead ). c) is it a book of wisdom, like Conrad's or Proust's ? Or of mythic power, like Melville's or Dostoevsky's novels ? Or a "philosophical" prose, like Mann's fiction or Freud's essays ? Or esoteric vision(s) of cosmos, like Tantric or Gnostic scriptures ? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding NO to all these questions. I suppose the only people ( apart from professional idolaters ) who would extract some sort of pleasure by reading "Finnegans Wake" are folx who revel in puns, conundrums & rebus-addicts. As for the "Wake", I gave it 3 stars as an homage to author's relentless pursuit of his vision ( however flawed or sterile it may be )....
Rating:
Summary: try
Review: get some help and give it a chance. skeleton's key is good and if you can get the tapes then you're half way there.
Rating: 
Summary: Jabberwocky Overdrive; or, Here Comes Everybody
Review: I've wandered around through this book for several years -- usually for only a few pages or a couple of sentences at a time. I won't presume to debate its merits with the Joycean "scholars" who have posted their reviews. Let me just say that every time I've dipped into this cauldron of language, I always retrieved something of value, whether it was a chuckle at Joyce's humor, an interest in pursuing allusions to their original sources, or a heightened sensitivity to the sounds and meanings of words. And I'm always amused at these devout Joyceans who never seem to have noticed that Joyce didn't put an apostrophe in his title.
Rating:
Summary: it is a good thing that this book exists
Review: Were it not for this novel (?) somewhere some little known writer would create something similar and put him/herself on the litereay map, causing the rest of us to have to hear about it for an unbearably long time. I am glad an already established, and, at this time, much revered writer pulled this linguistic trick so as not to have hear about what a genius the beforementioned hypethetical author is. Joyce was already loved for the slightly more comprehensible books he wrote prior to this one, and therefore the release of this prank, whoops, novel did little more than secure his place as the "greatest novelist." Now we can go on ignoring the gags and babble of "Finnegan's Wake" and go back to enjoying readable books. Thanks.
Rating:
Summary: The book is.
Review: Are you aware many people die of hunger each day without knowing this book exists?
Rating:
Summary: Joyce. Enough said.
Review: Joyce's Finnegans Wake is a masterwork of linguistic indecipherability. His puns, wordplays and encyclopedic depth reflect the genius at work in this novel of night. The disgust shown above clearly reflects a culture of sarcasm and anti-intellectuality. But this novel is no place to start with Joyce: he made monumental leaps between Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake--to start at the end is like trying to do quantum physics without having taken an algebra course. Joyce has written either the twentieth century's masterpiece or the greatest practical joke in academic history. Try to read the work, but understand its context.
Rating:
Summary: Kind of light and fluffy.
Review: This book is very entertaining, and has maddening pace, kind of like the Matrix. In fact this book is a lot like the Matrix. It's about as complicated as The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I take dumps more dense than this. Reading this book will take about and hour and a half, though it will only feel like 20 minutes. Think Curious George. I can't wait for the movie (I hope Spielberg directs it, and finishes the last sentence).
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