rondi adamson.ca

Today is James Joyce's birthday, and as per my New Year's resolutions, I am indeed reading Ulysses. I'm on page 304. In other words, 400 more pages to go. As it is proving fairly easy reading I suspect I'll be done within a week.

Thoughts: 1) Glad I was a good student in high school Latin; 2) Glad I always enjoyed learning about myths and such at school; 3) Can see why this book caused such a big whoop in 1922 but doubt it would cause anyone to blink one eyelash now; 4) Joyce certainly gets how utterly f*ck-ed up Irish males are about women and in particular their mothers (I've got some relatives with huge problems in this regard) and how alcohol ruins many Irish families (and some of those aforementioned relatives have huge problems in this regard, as well); 5) I could live without much of the book's vulgarity (but I'm a famous priss); 6) Really wish the original chapter titles had been left in the book; 7) I love Joyce's descriptions of certain characters' observations of animals (there's definitely empathy there).