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2017 Audio Listen-Along starts here (Post 1578):
/topic/show/...

Pre-discussion, planning and banter to the 2016 ReadAlong starts here:
/topic/show/...

Geoffrey's amazing link: an interactive on-line copy of Ulysses. Check out the "Notes", "Links" and "colour coding" tabs:


Where the discussions begin for the 2017 Listen-Along
Telemachus (Episodes 1-3): /topic/show/...
The Odyssey (Episodes 4-15): /topic/show/...
The Nostos (Episodes 16-18): /topic/show/...

Where the discussions begin for the 2016 schedule:
The Telemachiad (Episodes 1-3): /topic/show/...

The Odyssey (Episodes 4 - 15)
Episodes 4 & 5 (Calypso & The Lotus Eaters): /topic/show/...
Episode 6 (Hades): /topic/show/...
Episode 7 (Aeolus): /topic/show/...
Episode 8 (Lestrygonians): /topic/show/...
Episode 9 (Scylla & Charybdis): /topic/show/...
Episode 10 (The Wandering Rocks): /topic/show/...
Episode 11 (Sirens): /topic/show/...
Episode 12 (Cyclops): /topic/show/...
Episode 13 (Nausicaa): /topic/show/...
Episode 14 (Oxen In The Sun): /topic/show/...
Episode 15 (Circe): /topic/show/...

The Nostos
Episode 16 (Eumaeus): /topic/show/...
Episode 17 (Ithaca): /topic/show/...
Episode 18 (Penelope): /topic/show/...

Where the discussions begin for the 2014-15 Readalong: Posts 147 - 677
Listing of where discussion starts for each chapter:
Episode 1: /topic/show/...
Episode 2: /topic/show/...
Episode 3: /topic/show/...
Episode 4: /topic/show/...
Episode 5: /topic/show/...
Episode 6: /topic/show/...
Episode 7: /topic/show/...
Episode 8: /topic/show/...
Episode 9: /topic/show/...
Episode 10: /topic/show/...
Episode 11: /topic/show/...
Episode 12: /topic/show/...
Episode 13: /topic/show/...
Episode 14: /topic/show/...
Episode 15: /topic/show/...
Episode 16: /topic/show/...
Episode 17: /topic/show/...
Episode 18: /topic/show/...

I might join. I like the idea of a loose schedule, Petra. Anyway, I'll try to start with you, but reserve the right to give up!

Petra , thanks ! A loose schedule sounds good .
Gill , glad that you'll be joining us . I have a paper version and a kindle version but I'm going to look into the version you have Petra.

Now I've publicly committed - can't put it off anymore .
Thanks Petra !

I'll start with you too. I think enough years have gone by to give it a second try. I like the idea of taking this one slow and in chunks Petra. I don't think it's the sort of book I can read cover to cover quickly.

Glad you are joining us , Greg . I've put this off for a very long time and I'm glad to have the support !
Years ago in college , I read The Dubliners and Portrait of am Artist as a Young Man . Looking forward to it .

Petra, what do you think about taking this chapter by chapter the way the Dante's Inferno readalong is doing with the Cantos? Some kind of extended schedule so we have plenty of time with each part and can also fit in other reading as we go? Just a thought.

Does it matter that my knowledge of the Odyssey is almost non-existent?

@Angela, I absolutely loved Dubliners! It was so lovely, beautifully suggestive and yet, at least to me, easy to comprehend. That will always be my favorite Joyce, I think. But I'm happy to be reading this with the group! Last time I read Ulysses alone and I think the moral support will be very helpful!

Gill , I'm so glad to hear that I am not alone ! That's why I'll try to get the version with notes .

Unfortunately, I can't find a copy on Kindle that has notes. I'll keep looking!

I'm so glad that you're all so interested!! This is going to be fun.

I think a slow schedule is good. I'll look over the book (can't remember the details of how many chapters, how long they are, etc). If the chapters are longer(ish), we could try for perhaps a chapter every couple of weeks? Any thoughts are welcome. I'll have a look at my book tonight, after work.

I hadn't read The Odyssey when I first read this (other than a child's version in elementary school) and I don't think it slowed my understanding of Ulysses down any. I got some of the references via Google but gave up on them after a few chapters. There was too much else going on in the book.
It'll be interesting to see if I find any Odyssey references this time through.

What I have found, though, is this podcast.


I may try using that to help.

Thanks again , Petra . I'm excited about this .

Thanks for arranging this Petra!

Gill ,
Thanks for the link to the podcast . I may use it too .

Huh! I was racking my brain to remember this name. I have these podcasts saved (never listened to one, though). Thanks, Gill.

I found this blog very helpful and entertaining. Sheila's father teaches (or loves, can't remember which) Ulysses and she's read it with him many times. It's one of her favorite books. She writes about it as a friend:

To quote:
"...we are inside Stephen Dedalus and we are inside Leopold Bloom. We see and hear only what they see and hear.

But once you get that, once you stop looking for an objective voice � the whole thing is not only quite easy, but a ton of fun. To treat it like a big serious tome is to completely miss the point of the book � which is rather silly, most of the time � and has to do with what people eat, and how they chew, and what it’s like in a brothel, and the people you meet on any given day: windbags, sirens, patriotic nimrods, pious righteous folks, old tired teachers � whatever. It’s a cornucopia of personality."

Sounds like a fun time!

So happy for all the moral support !

Just a bit of background:

From:

James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) is, arguably, the single most influential novel of the 20th century. Written in a wide variety of styles, chock-full of an encyclopedia's worth of allusions, rife with enough puns and jokes to fill a comedian's career, the novel focuses on one day � June 16, 1904 � in the life of Mr. Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged Jewish man living in Dublin, Ireland.

Joyce wrote Ulysses between the years 1914 and 1921.
Before being published as a whole, the book was serialized in the American journal "The Little Review" beginning in 1918. When the journal published the episode in the book called "Nausicaa", which depicts the main character masturbating, the publication was prosecuted for obscenity and the book was censored until 1933. In that year, Judge M. Woolsey declared that the book was neither pornographic nor obscene. The scandal in the U.S. was only one of many around the world, and ironically, it was Ireland, Joyce's home country, that was the last to lift the ban on Ulysses.

Ulysses is best known for its stream-of-consciousness style, where Joyce forces readers to become intimately familiar with his characters' thoughts no matter how fragmentary and disoriented they may be. But style is also extremely flexible in the novel, giving Joyce the power to alter his form to fit his content. Hence, a chapter set in a newspaper office is broken up with newspaper headlines; a chapter set in a maternity ward is written in styles ranging from Old English verse to contemporary Dublin vernacular, as if language itself were going through a gestation period and being prepared for delivery; a chapter set almost entirely in Leopold's Blooms fantasies and nightmares is written out as a play script.

Famously, Ulysses is structured on Homer's Odyssey, with each of the eighteen episodes in Joyce's book corresponding to a given episode in Homer's work. Joyce makes his hero, Leopold Bloom, a sort of modern-day Ulysses. He casts Bloom's wife, Molly, as Penelope, and casts the aspiring artist Stephen Dedalus as Telemachus.
Ulysses moves the epic journey from the realm of external adventures to the realm of the mind, and in doing so Joyce dares to make a heroic figure of an ordinary urban man of no apparent distinction. For all its difficulty and obscurity, what Ulysses can do is to reveal the ordinary as extraordinary.


There's this fascinating thing about Ulysses. Hordes of people think it's a brilliant book, maybe the best book ever written, except for one thing…they can't make it to the end.

Now today, knowing the reputation the book has, you might feel like you "have to" like Ulysses. That's nonsense. When you get right down to it, Ulysses is an extremely difficult book. There are good reasons not to like it. As you push through it, there might be periods of frustration and boredom. You might even wonder: "Who does Joyce think he is?"

But what about the novel itself is so great? Let's talk about something that Joyce struggled with: jealousy.

Joyce was passionately in love with his wife, Nora Barnacle, but early on their relationship hit a major bump. In 1909, a friend of Joyce's informed him that, when Joyce had only just become involved with Nora, she had also been seeing this "friend." Unlikely as the story was, Joyce went mad with jealousy. He wrote letters to Nora that first were harsh and accusatory, but gradually became more and more honest and revealed just how vulnerable he felt. Joyce simply could not conceive of the woman he loved most being involved with another man.

We hear a lot about Ulysses as this extraordinary encyclopaedic book that makes language go everywhere and do everything, but at the heart of it is ordinary human fear: fear of being betrayed by the person you love, made to look a fool. For all his genius, Joyce still couldn't figure out ordinary human problems like how to deal with love and pride and jealousy. And he gives us a hero like ourselves � a hero that's lost amidst these problems.

Petra wrote: "....a chapter set in a maternity ward is written in styles ranging from Old English verse to contemporary Dublin vernacular, as if language itself were going through a gestation period and being prepared for delivery..."

This was my favorite chapter when I read the book. It was the first chapter where I "got" what was happening. LOL!


Petra wrote: "As you push through it, there might be periods of frustration and boredom. You might even wonder: "Who does Joyce think he is?"
..."

This. So much this. One really has to wonder about Joyce...... :D
There are periods of boredom but each of us will have different parts we don't resonate with. We'll help each other through those bits & pieces.

Count me in!

Angela wrote: "So happy for all the moral support !"

Ditto!

The nearest I've ever got to Homer's Odyssey, apart from some little stories from it at school, is the Coen Brothers' film 'Oh, Brother, where art thou?' I hope this will be enough to carry me through!

Petra , you are awesome ! This makes me not so nervous about reading it .

{{blushing}} Aw, thanks, Angela. If we're going to wade into this tome, we're going in up to our waists. No ankle-wetting for us. We're going to make this fun, as Joyce meant it to be.

Welcome aboard, Paula! Glad to have you with us.

PS: we're not going to be like those hordes of people that shmoop talks about. We're going to finish this book. :D

This might be fun as we travel through Dublin. It shows the sights and locations of the places in Ulysses:



We can follow Bloom around during his day.

This was my vote on the poll, I would love to join in this read, just got to find a copy!

Petra wrote: "This might be fun as we travel through Dublin. It shows the sights and locations of the places in Ulysses:



We can follow Bloom around during his day."

Nice link Petra!

Glad to have you join us, Evelyn! I'm so glad that there's this much interest in tackling this book. The more, the merrier, the more fun and the easier for us to tackle this monster.

Thanks, Greg!

I'd like to jump into this group read too. I've been wanting to read this book for a while.

Great , Summerdale ! I get more excited every time someone else decides to join in .

Me, too, Angela.

Summerdale, adding you to the list. Glad to have you join us.

Themes


Every human goes on a journey, just as the mythical Odysseus (Roman name, Ulysses) did in his heroic adventures in Homer’s Odyssey. But in the real life of modern man, this journey is generally humdrum and uneventful, as in Joyce's Ulysses, rather than heroic.

The novel presents many other themes, or sub-themes. Examples are the following:

Infidelity
Guilt
Anti-Semitism
The Influence of Shakespeare
Sexual Temptation
The Cycles of Life From Birth to Death
Religion as a Nefarious Influence
Camaraderie

I'd like to join too please, though does a loose schedule mean I should finish it within the next 10 years? (because that's how long it's sat on my bookshelf so far)

Can I join too please

Pink - lol ! I'm glad you are joining in . I remember you mentioned that you would read it with me one of the times I said I wanted to read it . Now I can't back out !!

Glad you are in , too , Anne.

Pink wrote: "I'd like to join too please, though does a loose schedule mean I should finish it within the next 10 years? (because that's how long it's sat on my bookshelf so far)"

LOL! The book sat on my shelf a lot longer than that before I read it. It was an old copy when I bought it, spine never cracked (probably never read). While I read it, the pages kept falling out. LOL!

Glad to have you join us, Pink & Anne. The more people that join, the more fun I think we'll have. Even if we moan & groan our way through the book. :D

Count me in! And a loose schedule sounds great to me!

Glad you are joining in , Charbel . This is going to be fun - the more the merrier ; or we will suffer together and misery love s company .

Angela wrote: "Glad you are joining in , Charbel . This is going to be fun - the more the merrier ; or we will suffer together and misery love s company ."

Thanks Angela! I'm actually looking forward to this.

I've had a bit of a listen to the Frank Delaney podcasts. The good news is they are each only five minutes long, and the first three I have listened to are very interesting. The bad news is there are, to date, more than 270 of them (and I'm not sure how far through the book he has reached yet!)

Oh dear. Gill . We could be reading thus until next year!

Can I join in as well?
Bought this one for my kindle.

Yay , Diane . I need all the moral support I can get . It's been on my list forever . Have you read it before ?

I have a paper version and another kindle version , neither of which have notes or annotations . Petra has a version with notes that was recommended to her ( see one of her previous posts) but I haven't been able to find it . Just bought the one you did .
I now own three copies - I have no excuse now !

Never read it before so I thought it would helpful to have the study guide with it.

I agree!

But I really want to have the experience of just reading it so I think I'll read parts of it and then look at the notes to see if I understood any of it .

Yay! More people joining!

Angela, that's how I read it the first time. I read the chapter, then went on-line to find a helpful guide. That's when I found The Sheila Variations (link above; Post 17), which I found helpful and amusing.

Adding Charbel and Diane to our list of Readers.

Gill, I know!!! There are so many of his podcasts that we'll never get through them. I think they'd be fun to listen to, though, which is why I'm collecting them on the ipod....but I haven't listened to one yet. I should perhaps start.

I have my paper copy of the book (never cracked) ( ), an ebook version and a CD set (never listened to) (it was on sale once on Chapters.ca). Like you, Angela, I have no excuses either.
That paper copy is a doorstop of a book! 828 pages! That's a LOT of notes, I think. Maybe they'll help us and I'll be sure to pass on the ones to the sections we're stumbling over.