I didn't say I didn't enjoy Ulysses, I did, immensely, even if it was long winded and utterly pointless. I didn't enjoy As I Lay Dying. I don't think Faulkner conveys his intended message well, at least in this book.

Ya, I understand. I was going to challenge your tendency to hawk in on 'a message' or a thesis etc. I can't defend Faulkner though because I haven't read him yet.

I will say the passage that turned me against him was the paragraph about 1/4 of the way into the book where the youngest child rationalizes that since his mother is dead and the fish he caught is also dead, his mother is a fish. After that it launches into about 3/4 of a page of "what is being? are we being during sleep?" etc etc in a very poor attempt to make a point.

im about 3/4 of the way through as i lay dying right now...im enjoying it...its not revelatory like most of the people who recommended it made it out to be...but it is a pretty good story with believable characters and...it has something to say about the demise of southern tradition in the wake of a rapidly changing national identity etc etc modernism.

oh yeah, add me to the list of people who got 100-somethign pages thorugh ulysses and then threw in the towel...a couple years ago.

I have Ulysses in my bookshelf but I don't know if I'll read it right now.

I got 50 pages through Ulysses and was absolutely loving reading it, and then somehow i managed to lose the thing. The Biggest Book Ever, and i lose it.

I received Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake a few days ago for my birthday from a friend whose never read a book before. He must have looked them up on a list or something and obviously he won’t be able to distinguish between something challenging (in a cosy 'intellectual' way like a cryptic crossword) and something infuriatingly difficult. I doubt I'll ever read Finnegan's Wake. However I have read the entirety of In Search Of Lost Time (and started doing so a second time) which isn't difficult at all despite its length, with the books being split into separate stories, and the books not having to be read all in one sequence (i.e., being self-contained in a way).

Congrats. I got it a few weeks ago for 4 euros (new).
Haven't even made an attempt in starting in it though. Plus it's in English, so I have no idea if I'll be able to understand much of it, but for that price it seemed worth a try.

When I bought Finnegan's Wake the lady at the counter told me "Good Luck".. I think I'll tackle it and the rest of Joyce in the fall, because right now I'm all about crime/thriller/Florida stuff.

About As I Lay Dying, I hated it at first, but I reread it twice and then it sunk in. I prefer The Sound and the Fury but AILD is still great. The Cora-Whitfield-Addie chapter triple punch is one of the most wonderful things I've ever read. Strangely enough, Ulysses didn't anger me like AILD did

my balls are busted with people telling me not to read it; and guess what, usually those people are the ones who havent.

i started it yesterday and i m doing smth that i hope is not a very bad idea, that it wont bore me. i read from the translation and then from the english book. i dont want to miss many things from his writing.