Ulysses - a review

What can I say about such a mind-blowing book? I could barely decide how many stars I would give it since it divided my opinion so. No wonder it's so controversial. There were a few chapters I absolutely hated (Scylla and Charbidis anyone?) and I thought I would end up disliking Joyce too for inflicting some of it and being such an arrogant know everything at times. Yet I find myself admiring him a great deal and wanting to re-read the book at some point if only to try and make some more sense of it. The technique astonishes, but I can't give it a glowing review because frankly I didn't like it that much. It grated in parts. Maybe that's why it's so revered though, and why I wanted to read it again, because it challenges in a way that very few other books manage. 

I'd like to read it with some proper guides handy so that I don't have to keep flipping to the end notes. Nevertheless, I've found some good guides online and will miss some of the guides as I carry along my way. No plans to read any more Joyce at the moment, maybe he will get on the next book bucket list.

I also still have to get around to listening to the broadcast at some point, and it will be interesting to compare the two experiences. 

Anyway, it got three stars in the end. I won't be going around boasting I've read it or attending the next Bloom's day, but I am glad to have read it and to have finished it, as I think if I'd given up half-way through I wouldn't have ever read it. Glad to have read it in the version I did as well, the free ebook was apparently broken! Also, it had been edited. I know the text I read was full of a lot of mistakes (it was the 1922 version), but I'd rather that than something that has been edited in too heavy-handed a way.