During my last semester at Georgia Tech, I had one remaining 3000-level English credit I needed to graduate. During the last week to register, I quickly found an open class titled "Modern Authors" and signed up.
But when I attended the first day, I learned that Gatech's online registration system had truncated the class title. The full title was "Modern Authors: James Joyce", and I was the only engineering student in a semester long class about James Joyce, which I had to take it and pass in order to graduate.
It was... pretty good actually.
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man was enjoyable, as were his short stories. His style was unlike anything I had read before and it was musical in a way. However, I found Ulysses impenetrable: It rambled, and was difficult to understand what was even being described in the text, let alone the significance of it. Mostly it was just strange. Thankfully the majority of your grade was based participating in class discussion. Talking about it, seeing how confused everyone else was, and trying to make sense of it all together was a fun way to spend an afternoon in Skiles.
I am trying to read Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man right now, but the 19th century Irish-isms keep kicking me off the flow. I can't concentrate on the story with so many unknown words, people and events.
There are explanatory notes, but reading them precludes immersion, and not reading them precludes comprehension.
You should try Finnegans Wake. At this point, Joyce feels less like a literary giant and more like an elaborate inside joke among a select few.
No, for the love of God don't try Finnegan's Wake. Take the 25 bucks you would have used to buy it online and do something better with it, like burning it in the trash can, or buying a North Korean memecoin with it.
Ugh Skiles, don't remind me. Being confused in that ugly building was a traumatic rite of passage.
The trick with Ulysses is to just let it wash over you. If you try to fully understand each sentence it’s too hard to read.
I'm sure I'll eat some donuts here, but Ulysses is neither an interesting nor a well written story.
I agree wrt it as a “story” and yet i still find it very enjoyable to read!
Oh come on. A snot green nose rag. You can almost taste it, can't you?
If text can make you gag with revulsion, it is, by definition, good communication.
For anyone who is curious about Joyce but doesn't want to take on Ulysses, I would recommend his Dubliners collection of short stories, which is much more accessible and still a really good read. I would love to tackle Ulysses, preferably with a good companion piece.
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man is also approachable.
Kenner is useful when it comes to Ulysses. Also map books. I don't remember using this particular volume but assume there are predecessors https://www.amazon.com/James-Joyce-Ulysses-Grafiks-Literary/...
I read Dubliners in CEGEP (Grade 12) and, while I didn't care for it much at the time, in retrospect it's impressive how I still remember the beats from "A Mother". Apparently the characters were based on people Joyce actually knew.
Happy Bloom's Day 2 days ago everyone [1].
I'm on my 4th attempt at Ulysses. It's just two dense. Too many niche references that only an educated early 20th century Irish citizen would understand.
[1] Ulysses took place all on June 16th 1904. Most of the book is stream of consciousness from Leopold Bloom. Bloom's Day is now a celebration of Joyce in Ireland
I remember listening to a Robert Anton Wilson talk, where he claimed that he had read letters that Joyce wrote to a lover. These letters were only released many years after Joyce's death. Apparently they revealed that Bloom's Day occurs on the date corresponding to Joyce's first ever sexual experience for which he didn't have to pay money (a hand job, for which he was very grateful). Wilson thought it was funny because the common narrative (and that supported by the church) was that the date corresponded to his first kiss with his girlfriend. But actually the church was celebrating a hand job.
> It's just two dense.
Try reading just one copy :)
> Too many niche references that only an educated early 20th century Irish citizen would understand.
Presumably there are dozens of companion references to explain those. Can anyone recommend some?
I have this site [0] bookmarked in case I ever get around to reading it again. I like the use of hypertext so that you can follow the explanations you want and ignore others, and the inclusion of pictures and videos reminds me of the breathless anticipation of new multimedia experiences back when CD-ROMs started becoming common.
I read Ulysses last year and enjoyed it but this "companion" book was indispensable:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/ulysses-annotated-revised-and-e...
But also the free (online) Joyce Project with hyperlinked annotations:
http://m.joyceproject.com/chapters/telem.html
I wish I'd bought this version when It came out. It's pretty expensive now.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-cambridge-ulysses-the-1922-...
And I cannot recommend Frank Delaney's Re: Joyce podcast enough, sadly he passed away before completing the project
It took me a few tries to get through Ulysses, but I enjoyed it when I finally figured it out.
What helped for me is first reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which is kind of like an easier version of the same style that introduces some of the characters in Ulysses. And then following along on ulyssesguide.com when I was reading it. Some of the parts (the fake quasi latin) are extra difficult and it helps to have a guide so you don't get completely lost as to what's going on.
I had a few tries at Ulysses in my 20s and always abandoned it.
I tried it again aged 38 and I found it flowed much more easily. The protagonist Leopold Bloom, who I remembered as an old man from earlier attempts, was relatable. It turns out Bloom is exactly 38.
I find side notes too disruptive when reading so my crutch for the middle was to skim a short chapter summary before a starting each new chapter. This let me enjoy the dreamlike qualities of the text without needing to catch every reference.
If you don't mind audiobooks, here's one way (well, two ways) to listen to Ulysses:
Just in case people consider this seriously, I just want to add my two cents: Ulysses although is prose, it's so much more of a poetry than prose compared many other novels. I personally don't think listening to someone's reading of Ulysses will be remotely similar to reading it on page. Some of the chapters are really almost entirely about discovering how to read this chapter. I don't necessarily think it's bad, just the same way you can listen to poetry by going to a poetry reading session, you can listen to Ulysses. Just note that it's going to be an entirely different experience than reading it, and it will likely forever bias your interpretation of the book. Just my humble two cents, I don't claim to know anything.
You can listen to the man himself reading it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhW0TrzWGmI
It's meant as pure lyrical poetry. Reading it aloud is like dancing with your tongue instead of feet.
What a surreal take. Poetry differs from prose in that it relies much more heavily on being spoken aloud.
That's certainly your take on poetry, but not mine. It also may not be everyone's. I think everyone has a unique reading of each poetry, and thus reading and listening are different. There is nothing wrong with listening to poetry, it's just that I prefer to read first (find my own reading) then listen to others. I personally don't think I would have wanted to listen to Ulysses before reading it. Again, you may find it bizarre and that's fine.
I agree with GP that poetry is more suited to the spoken word that prose, not less. Ideally, by the author's spoken word.
But neither perspective is "bizarre" or "surreal", just different takes.
Etymologically the word "poetry" comes from the Greek verb for "make," which has no connection to speech or sound. Historically, in many places and at many times, poetry has not fit into narrow straitjacket you're putting it in.
Poetry in some languages and traditions is at least as visual as it is oral/verbal. Calligraphy is tightly bound to some poetic traditions. In others, the form of a poem is chiefly or entirely calligraphic, not oral, acoustic, or rhythmic.
Even if we restrict ourselves to Western Anglophone poetry of the past 100 years, you'll find that the sound of poetry itself has changed drastically. Find a recording of someone reading an English-language poem in the early 20th century. You'll likely find its sound quite alien, not just because of the antiquated pronunciation but because there's a strong element of something like chant -- and delivery is far more affected than it would be today. I'm not so sure the sound of poetry for you would sound at all like poetry to, I don't know, Yeats or Kipling.
In turn, poetry in Greece and Rome was so tightly coupled to music that it would be more correct to say that poetry in these civilizations was defined by its characteristics when sung, not spoken. Hence in Homer and Classical Greek the word "aoidos," singer, is frequently used of poets.
> Poetry is literally defined by its characteristics when spoken. That's what "poetry" means.
Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poetry) tells me that its etymology is through "poet," which in turn means "author" or "maker," and that its meaning is "Literature composed in verse or language exhibiting conscious attention to patterns and rhythm." Neither of those things uniquely privileges its spoken experience. But it doesn't really matter what the etymology or meaning of the word is when discussing the best way to enjoy it, and it's at best useless to try to tell someone else that they're enjoying it wrong.
Why not both? Listen and read along.
> Why not both? Listen and read along.
Have you done that successfully for any book? I've never tried, but it seems likely to me to be very difficult, unless you happen to read at exactly the narrator's pace.
> Most audio players these days have an option to listen to the media at higher speeds. Through some FFT magic, I think, the tone doesn't go up either; it's just faster. I watch most of my YT vids at ~2x now and most podcasts are at ~1.8x. It can be a bit jarring at first, but you get used to it really fast.
I may be protesting too much, since, as I say, I've never tried it. But this seems like a solution to the problem where the narrator's reading speed is a fixed percentage of your reading speed, whereas I have in mind the way that I read, which is that I might go very quickly through some sections that don't need or to which I don't want to pay detailed attention, and then slow way down in the more difficult sections. I think it is fairly rare for audiobook narrators to approach the book this way (but maybe they do it so seamlessly I don't notice?).
This is how I cured my dyslexia.
I love this for Shakespeare performances and other old plays.
Most of Bill's work are on YT, in full, for free anyways. So you can find a 'good' one and read along, getting the nuances in performance too.
LibreVox has a lot of good recordings of older works too (not just plays), if you're okay with amateurs/volunteers reading things.
I'm doing "subtitles" for Ulysses right now. Combo physical book and audio book while I read.
The best reading I've found is from Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), Ireland’s national public-service broadcaster. [1] It's treated more as a play, one part per actor. It's special - my closest other experience is watching Shakespeare.
[1] https://www.rte.ie/culture/2025/0527/1146705-listen-ulysses-...
The title is in reference to Molly Bloom's stream of consciousness monologue in the final chapter. If you read one single work of english literature in your life, let it be this: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4300/4300-h/4300-h.htm#chap1...
Finally read it this year and so happy that I did!
Although a lot of that reading was skimming haha. I think that's good for a first reading though. You get a really good idea of the overall pacing and chapter-to-chapter variety that way.
Why this one?
Honestly, it’s not as strange a read as people make out. Read it twice. After the first time which was ok but not an amazing experience I then read an analysis/explaination and then I read it a second time which was obviously much easier and it was really great.
Finnegan’s Wake on the other hand… bailed after three pages.
I've never read Finnegans Wake, but it made a lot more sense when I heard it spoken out loud, which I think was the intent. Here's Joyce reading it: https://youtu.be/M8kFqiv8Vww?si=YO69BX_KVEINr5mo.
I had the same sensation when I listened to Fiona Shaw performing The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, who breathes completely new life into it: https://youtu.be/lPB_17rbNXk?si=IBKeyTnu0KCZ2r_U. (She's an amazing actress, truly one of the greats.) The poem is supposed to many types of voices talking, so you lose a lot of meaning if you just read it like a poem (even T. S. Eliot himself reads it quite poorly!).
Fiona Shaw is one of the greats. I've been lucky enough to see her on stage a couple of times.
For those of you who don't recognize her name, she's Maarva in Andor, and some minor character (I don't remember) in the Harry Potter films - neither of which roles get even close to challenging her range and power.
I would love to see her on stage. She did wonders with the Maarva character even though it was a very small role.
Anyone seen Jorn Barger lately?
RTE produced a dramatised reading of Ulysses by actors. Still available for download. I found this helped me access the written text.
https://www.rte.ie/culture/2025/0527/1146705-listen-ulysses-...
I had a similar experience. I finally got around to reading Ulysses when I had some downtime between jobs and pushed my way through it. I ended up referring to https://www.ulyssesguide.com/ as I went along which helped substantially: the extra context and discussion made me appreciate the novel more.
I came to the conclusion that while I didn't necessarily _like it_ per se, I had to acknowledge how absurdly talented Joyce was, and that there was some justification for being in the top books list. My feeling was that the lack of enjoyment was a fault of the book but more that I didn't have the background to appreciate it. Though there were also some chapters where most people agree Joyce was just trying too hard and it shows.
I (too) had a similar experience! On the first read I felt like I was barely scratching the surface but could enjoy just enough of the lyricism and imagery to slog through, but definitely didn't "get it". Then I read it with a bunch of fellow book nerds and put some effort into unpacking it and had a blast.
It definitely repays sustained attention, if literary fiction is your jam.
It's definitely not the hardest "arthouse" novel (or whatever you call it), I found Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon so much more harder, and Beckett's Three Novels (i.e. Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable) was likely the most difficult text I attempted to read in my life. Even then, I think it's still pretty difficult for an average Western reader in 2020s, our literacy attention span and interest is very low. People should definitely attempt it though!
Pynchon's "California" novels (crying of lot 49, vineland, inherent vice) are much more readable, and arguably enjoyable. I found Gravity's Rainbow pretty inscrutable.
Crying of Lot 49 is wonderful and I am not really a big fiction fan.
I will have to give Vineland and Inherent Vice a shot. Gravity's Rainbow is just a lost cause for me with the size let alone the content.
You made it three pages? I doubt I made it two.
I would strongly recommend anyone who has a second-hand impression of Joyce based on articles like this just go and read Dubliners. Seriously. It’s an amazing set of short stories that are wonderfully-written, at times funny, moving, sad, haunting etc. It’s just incredible. It’s not a hard read at all and will enrich your life. I recommend it to basically everyone and several people have talked to me years later about stories in it. It’s fantastic.
Then maybe read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. A really great semi-autobiographical work.
At that point you’ve probably made your mind up one way or the other about whether you like Joyce, so then if you feel like it, go read Ulysses and/or Finnegan’s Wake if you want to. But don’t do it because you think it will impress anyone or anything like that. Just read it if you want to. Before you read Ulysses, I would personally recommend reading a good modern version of Homer[1] because that’s just a great experience anyway and plenty of people don’t know the original story and so don’t understand the relevance of the title and are kind of lost before they even get started.
[1] eg I’ve heard very good things about the Mendelsohn translation https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo243090... . I heard some excerpts from Seamus Heaney’s version read out and they were amazing and lyrical as you might expect but probably more “poetic” than most people might care for if they’re not already Heaney fans. I read an older translation but I can’t dig it out right now.
I tried reading it once, but hearing excerpts of this book read aloud really unlocked it for me. In the right hands (mouth?), it's hilarious.
Maybe pulp fiction has spoiled me but I found it unapproachable.
I crave pace, parsability, and clear purpose.
Ulysses is on the same "reading level" (Lexile) as "Who is Lebron James" - 1050 - for advanced elementary and middle school.
Those of a more light-hearted temperament might prefer Ellman's book on Oscar Wilde. But Joyce is himself very adequately described and amusingly so.
Homer’s Odyssey as a prerequisite is the main obstacle.
However, the Odyssey is much easier to read than Ulysses.
You have to be familiar with it to appreciate the connections, but you don't need to read it. A good summary will do fine. Even the Wikipedia page is good enough.
It’s not a prerequisite though. Nor is Hamlet or any of the other works referenced. Very little will be missed if you haven’t read the Odyssey. It’s a book that stands alone on its own. Like anything else, Ulysses is inspired by other works, but you don’t need to catch every single reference or allusion to enjoy a book or movie
You don't need to have read Homer
Jingle.
Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway makes for a nice stream of consciousness study in contrast.
Colorful gossip: It's been reported that Woolf disapproved of the morals of Ulysses.
Indeed. She called him a “queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples” after Ulysses.
Better to read about Ulysses in Ilium by Dan Simmons, a scifi book. Best if read without knowing the plot.
something, something, something, dawn, something, rosy fingers, something
told you I'd read it!
In the 1970s I made the mistake of satisfying one of my general ed requirements by taking a one quarter class which covered _only_ Ulysses. The professor had done his PhD thesis on Ulysses and knew the page numbers (both in the edition he was using and the paperback version the students bought) of random passages even when a student came up with a question that was tangential to the immediate expected discussion.
It was quite a challenge writing the term paper (which was most of the grade) knowing it would be evaluated by this professor. My attempts were mediocre and in exchange I received a well deserved mediocre grade (some sort of "B") in the class (sort of a "Ain't that cute that uqual tried so hard and wrote so many pages of related but nonsensical BS but at least he came to class" grade).
It's safe to say that I will NEVER again read Ulysses!
So you wont read it again because you had a professor that dedicated his career to the book and it made you feel insecure? That seems unfair. Give a shot, free of pretension.
Unhelpful
Dude has a mildly traumatic experience in a high pressure environment at which he pushed through, and you respond with toxicity and name calling? This is not OK behavior for an adult. Do better.
Right at this moment people are sitting in the trenches and are getting torn apart by artillery and drone attacks in several places of this world of ours. You really should go out more if getting a B grade from a stuck up professor constitutes a traumatic experience for you.
What name did I call? That just was a fair description of how he said he felt. But seriously, we're calling getting a "B" a mildly traumatic experience? I'm bowing out of this conversation. Thanks!
FWIW, i see nothing wrong, whatsoever, with your comments. The white knight, however...
I don't think those observations are huge judgments. No less so at such a young age. All the more reason to give up the previous misgivings and try it again. No need to reach so hard to find offense. It's not there.
What are some of the books that had the biggest impact in changing or developing your mind?
I read Erich von Däniken's Chariot of the God when I was 8 or 9 and eventually became incandescently angry when I eventually realised it was all made up...
On a more positive note I read Catch 22 when I was about 13 or so and I think that gave me some inkling that the world wasn't really going to make much sense!
The Odyssey, Moby Dick, Fire Upon the Deep.
I'm interested in the why for each, if you've got the time to write it out.
The odyssey because it's the basis function for most of western thought (wily male human outsmarts gods, witches, and suitors on a long journey home). The best implementation of the monomyth, imho.
Moby Dick because it's not just a book about whaling, it's a book about world philosophy with crazy tangents.
Fire Upon the Deep because it is the best representation of post-singularity technological implications. Was a big inspiration for me going into machine learning and biology.
Ulysses to me is a really good example of a book whose reputation has been sabotaged by being assigned in class, that was where I first read it and while I was ambivalent to it most people seemed to hate it.
I think high schools / universities do their students such a disservice assigning books that students don't have the life experience to understand. Like they can read the book and analyze it sure but they're going to hate it and be bored out their minds because the experiences being portrayed aren't relatable (yet).
No high schooler or undergrad is going to understand a book that talks about being trapped in a life they don't enjoy by the choices they've made that's meant for a reader in their 40s.
This is extremely true. Reading Dostoyevsky as an adult was like finding a long lost treasure in ancient scrolls. I never understood what's the point in High School. Some of the classics are really classics because they're so much about humanity at large, and unless you're a literary prodigy like Rimbaud or whatever a lot of human drama won't make sense to you in high school--maybe even then. Schools really blew it out of proportion by assigning books like Crime & Punishment, Ulysses etc to 16 year old kids who are essentially overgrown toddlers. I think kids should still attempt to read these books in High School (learning comes from challenge) but creating the entire curriculum based on these adult books does them a disservice by not answering the "why do we give a shit?" question.
Really, same thing goes for most other disciplines. So many kids learn 4 years of algebra without having the slightest clue that this all is building to something called "Calculus" that they don't understand what it is.
> So many kids learn 4 years of algebra without having the slightest clue that this all is building to something called "Calculus" that they don't understand what it is.
That specifically at least could be improved greatly by just reworking classes to include plenty of hands-on practical application so it’s not so abstract. The pervasive thought during that period of my life was, “why am I learning this” and nobody wanted to bother answering except with the non-answer, “you might need it someday.”
Motivation is the root of all learning in my opinion.
Every class should start with a why~!
I wholeheartedly agree. It wasn't until my late 20s that I realized that literature is actually a deep reflection of real life, rather than just some story that someone made up. eg Animal Farm is not about farm animals...
Surely it wasn't my fault for being so dense. Age was, of course, mostly responsible. But probably also just poor instruction - surely if a teacher had actually explained this, it would have gone a long way to opening my mind and likely re-orienting my life.
Likewise with most other subjects - I spun my wheels learning French from age 10-15, because it was just an exercise in memorization rather than understanding. I learned Spanish in my 30s without even "studying", just by virtue of better understanding grammar at that point, and just focusing on trying to express ideas rather than worry about conjugations, spelling etc...
The school system really does not do a good job.
Calculus is advanced mathematics and absolutely not the end goal of algebra. It used to be taught at university level but its utility to other sciences (and toys of war) got it shoehorned into the high school curriculum at the expense of other maths and logic.
So many high school students tragically treat it as a litmus test, bounce off it and as a result suspend their dreams of higher education. It is the epitome of sacrificing education for occupational goals. If you don't intend to pursue applied science it is almost worthless forced masochism.
Disclaimer: I have a bachelors in pure mathematics.
I don't know, I'm finding Calculus ties a lot of earlier math together. The quadratic equations that I thought were a weirdly specific thing to spend so long drilling (ok so parabolas can describe kinematic arcs, what's the big deal?) come up again and again in differential equations.
The relationships between area and volume of various objects I spent geometry trying to understand make much sense as integrals.
Trig, logarithms, exponentials, infinite series, they all come into themselves when you start applying them to analysis. It just all sorta clicks once you start to thread them together.
We (as society) don't assign algebra or Calculus for the fun of it. We assign it because they are so useful in a lot of different careers (mostly in engineering). However it is really hard to find a simple and realistic example of why you need to spend the next 6 years learning that before you have done the math so you can see how it works on a real world problem.
I have a background in education, and I agree with you so hard.
Another related mistake educators make: assigning material that could be relevant or interesting to high school students, but then not giving them the sorts of experiences that will make it so. I was a nerd (and, in fact, skipped high school English), so when my classmates were reading Chaucer and were (predictably) bored to tears by The Knight's Tale (it's all about Virtue, right?), I led an impromptu study hall session on The Miller's Tale (it's a long series of scatalogical jokes), and what do you know?, they a) enjoyed it, and b) were more willing and able to give The Knight's Tale a go.
Don't even get me started on reading Shakespeare without, you know, experiencing it as a play first (or, indeed, ever).
I agree. Frankenstein is a great novel, and I've taught it at the college level, but I wouldn't include it in a high school curriculum. It feels to me like those "great books" lists got frozen in 1880-something, when general literacy (among literate people!) was much higher than it is today. Imposing texts like that onto much less experienced readers (much as we might deplore their relative lack of sophistication) seems almost punitive, and turns them away from reading entirely.
(I'm not familiar with We Do Not Part; thanks for the recommendation. I love all of the other authors you mention, and will check Han Kang out.)
Same. I've done I can't even count how many shows, and I don't particularly like reading plays. It's effort - usually worth it, but never not work.
By the way, I spent the first two or three years of my professional career performing school-tour Shakespeare. That was a joy. Hard graft: sometimes three shows in a day, along with loading and unloading the van in between, but my goodness it was rewarding. Great training, too. We'd do a show in the morning for twenty people in a library, and then in the afternoon in a 2,000 seat auditorium. You had to learn quickly how to modulate your performance, and what choices land with what kinds of audience.
For early high school, would you consider Moonlighting's condensed adaptation of Shrew to be a viable first exposure? https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/MoonlightingS3E...
> So many kids learn 4 years of algebra without having the slightest clue that this all is building to something called "Calculus"
But... that's not something they should think. It's not something that's true. You learn algebra to solve certain types of problems. You learn calculus to solve other types of problems.
I honestly don't get western obsession with Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. People at r/books are going nuts in how they tackle these books, some even try to learn the language only for that feat. Like, just what do you think even applies to humanity at large from those authors? Let alone the "treasure" angle? Incomprehensible for me. I read them in school and unlike some of my classmates I actually did read them fully. Today I wouldn't touch any of their books with ten feet pole voluntarily, unless I will find a need of a huge dose of depression plus cringe spread out on a thousands of pages. Which is unlikely.
Do you think it might be possible that youre missing something/missed something in your youth?
> high schools / universities do their students such a disservice assigning books that students don't have the life experience to understand
I disagree. If you read a book first, it can inform you as you go through your life experiences, and it can potentially have far more value to the student that way. The mistake in teaching these books in school is that the teaching is generally done with the assumption that students have already had those life experiences, making it a complete waste of everyone's time. At least that was how it was taught when I was in school.
I think it depends on the book.
I'm actually thinking of movies though. I watched Casablanca in my early 20s and it did nothing for me. I watched it again in my 50s and cried so hard my whole body shook. The difference was life experience. I knew what they were giving up. Something I had no experience with in my early 20s
I suspect some books have a similar issue.
I agree with this so much. My parents got me reading books early and I regularly read now, but for the most part I hated school asigned reading. There were maybe three books I actually enjoyed throughout high school and college, with the rest being a slog to get through. After college I stopped reading for fun for years because I was burned out on books I didn't enjoy.
A lot of school asigned reading cements the idea that someone just doesn't like books because, well, they haven't ever liked anything they were told to read.
Encouraging people to read period should be the first goal with yound adults, and if they want to read something that academics sneer at then that's totally fine. Reading any sort of book has benefits, and those who develop a love for it will naturally seek out more challening and interesting books when they are ready for them.
What classes assign Ulysses? Serious question.
Well, I had a third year university class that assigned it. But it assigned only it, for the entire semester, because it was a seminar devoted to reading Ulysses.
(This is far-and-away the best way to read Ulysses, FWIW)
And americans get in debt to do things like this?
The point of a liberal education is to help the student understand the world around them. Somewhere along the way, many colleges realized it was lucrative to convince people that the point of a liberal education is to engage in frivolous hobbies considered valuable by the people who share those hobbies, and millions of people with worthless "educations" are now suffering for it. That's what clubs are for.
>If you just wanted to learn Java, there are faster and cheaper methods.
I disagree, a book like Finnegan's Wake has a lot in common with Java. Think about a clean, clearly written book that tries to craft an enjoyable narrative, such as Snow Crash, that's the python of books. Now a book like Finnegan's wake, the narrative is completely impenetrable, instead the author focuses on other things like wordplay, sound play, rhythm, etc. In the same way, Java isn't so much about clearly and cleanly stating an algorithm, but more focused on the rules and regulations, terminology, the paperwork and formalities of programming. In this regard Java is more analogous to a legal tax code, but Finnegan's Wake is a good foundation for either.
As an American, I did the same. Step 1: Go to a public university where you can pay in-state tuition.
I didn’t. I did 3 STEM degrees and then made some money and went back to school to study liberal arts part time.
I think studying liberal arts after having life experience is so much more rewarding — not to mention affordable (assuming you’ve done something with your life).
The payoff of studying liberal arts in your 20s is very different from when you’re in your 40s (my age). The context is much more salient and the practical applications become more visible.
Morris Chang (chairman of TSMC) once wanted to be a literature major and he has mentioned how studying Shakespeare has helped him to understand human behavior and the human condition.
They chose that class. The syllabus stated what they are going to study. Having an expert in a subject explain something you want to understand, is what you pay for. There are many ways of expanding your knowledge. To each his own.
Ulysses is the kind of book people read just so they can tell other people that they read it.
I’ve never met anyone who has done that, this sounds like the kind of thing someone would say just to put people down.
You are saying this in a thread full of people who are telling everybody else in it that they've read it. And these people should be put down
Could you clarify what you’re saying? It sounds like you’re saying that you have some kind of moral obligation to insult people who say that they have read Ulysses.
That’s my first reading of your comment, but I don’t think it’s correct, because it’s just such a dumb thing to say.
It’s a thread about the book Ulysses. You don’t like the book, go to a different thread.
Incorrect, its a book for people that like farts.