Reddit Reddit reviews The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses (Routledge International Studies in)

We found 19 Reddit comments about The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses (Routledge International Studies in). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses (Routledge International Studies in)
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19 Reddit comments about The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses (Routledge International Studies in):

u/krisreisz · 7 pointsr/booksuggestions

You're better off just getting The New Bloomsday Book. It's basically a whole other book that's just annotations.

u/chunkyblow · 7 pointsr/books

I would recommend you purchase the Bloomsday Book. It was very helpful for me to read this while I was reading Ulysses. The book doesn't tell you how to interpret Ulysses, but it helps you to notice more of the references/inspirations/jokes in the story. Google books has a brief preview that you can use to see if it seems useful for you.

u/directoredditor · 5 pointsr/booksuggestions

Bloomsday has a great guide, though it's a bit pricier.

u/seanofthebread · 5 pointsr/books

The Bloomsday Book helped me immensely. Realistically, you should posses an encyclopedic knowledge of Catholicism, Literature and Irish history. If you lack that, turn to this guy.

u/promonk · 5 pointsr/AskReddit

The New Bloomsday Book is a handy companion for Ulysses.

I personally didn't find Ulysses impossible to understand, but Finnegan's Wake will forever be beyond me, I'm afraid.

u/callmechainmail · 4 pointsr/todayilearned

Absolutely read Ulysses. I'm not sure I could have done it without a class to guide me, but if you're clever and determined you can do a decent job on your own. If you do, I'd highly recommend keeping two things close at hand: The Bloomsday Book by Harry Blamires, which gives you barebones but crucial information about what's literally going on in the narrative, and the Oxford English Dictionary.

The great thing about Joyce is that his writing rewards any amount of work – the more time you spend figuring out why the text does what it does, the better you'll respond to the material. So take a class if you can, but give Ulysses another shot. It'll get under your skin in a serious, lifelong kinda way.

u/AMcc20 · 3 pointsr/books

I must give that companion a look. I used the Bloomsday book and found it very helpful.

u/mushpuppy · 3 pointsr/books

I actually found that reading the pertinent sections of the Ulysses guide before each chapter helped.

I liked the Molly section of the book. But otherwise Ulysses really seemed to me to be essentially a written collage or mix tape, in that Joyce strung together so much of what he'd studied and called it a book. Which I don't mean as a slur against mix tapes or collages.

Did reading Ulysses give me insights into existence, as any great work of art should? Hard to say, though that last section was pretty good--not because of what all Joyce did, but because of the sheer disconnect between Bloom and Molly.

Probably I'd recommend reading at least half a dozen other books instead. Heck, Shantaram was more important to me than Ulysses.

The combination of Shantaram, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and A Fan's Notes taught me a lot more than did Ulysses, and they were far more fun, interesting, and quick to read.

u/[deleted] · 3 pointsr/books

Ulysses Annotated
New Bloomsday Book

These are not suggestions. You need both of these.

u/part_eulipion · 2 pointsr/books

If you should ever like to pick it up again, and for everyone who reads this outside of a class, I really recommend a guide through the book. Any honest appreciation of Ulysses hinges on the demand it makes on its reader; the immensity of its achievement is outside the realm of most folks. I know that sounds snobby as hell, but Joyce was a literary genius, and I was a snobby English major.

u/cback · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

I recommend reading it with a Schema in hand, highlight or make note of every time a corresponding item is mentioned in the chapter (color grey in Nausicaa, tumescence by firework exploding) or even read along with a guide book, which I personally found extremely helpful, along with websites like Robot Wisdom (which I guess is now obsolete, unfortunately) or shmoop.

I definitely recommend you doing it with a Gilbert or Linati Schema at first try, finding things out on your own, and then using the other methods when you really want to fully discover a chapter. There is always more to appreciate and find when reading Ulysses, and the deeper you dig in the internet, the more you'll appreciate it.

Just beware the horrors of 'Oxen of the Sun' aka Chapter 14.

u/strychnineman · 2 pointsr/books

Realize that it was written during a certain period, for certain readers.

The person who was interested in this book in 1922 would have likely read Joyce's earlier works and been familiar with Stephen Dedalus. He/she would likely have been familiar with some Latin (the Mass was still conducted in Latin then). ...would have understood the history of Irish and English conflict. Ideally (and Joyce did not expect this) he/she would have been familiar with Dublin.

All of this means that Joyce basically skips the entire common (and expected -by-the-reader) concept and writer's device of exposition.

Which makes for a confusing ride if you aren't an Irish catholic living in Dublin born at the turn of the 19th century and who has read all of Joyce's previous works. And especially because most of us come at this book due to its reputation and being lauded as a Modern Masterpiece. ...we don't usually choose to read it because we have read his other books and loved them, but because it is required reading, or because we have heard so much about it, that we give it a shot. This means we come to it unprepared.

But sheesh... who ever prepares to read a book? Well, we would prepare ourselves if it were a foreign language, or in a technical field we knew little about, or was perhaps Shakespeare in the original English, or Beowulf in Old English, or the Canterbury Tales, etc. etc.

Lots of books require a little more effort than we are often prepared for. The reward is in reading them in their original sense rather than in a sanitized easy-access version. This is one of those books, that's all.

Sure, I'm exaggerating a bit. But let's look at merely the FIRST PAGE (This is the page that convinced me I really wasn't quite the reader that I thought I was, when I picked this book off the shelf for the first time with false bravado).

What the hell is Buck Mulligan doing and saying? What's with the frigging Latin, and can I buy a footnote clarifying it? Well, no, you can't. You're supposed to know it's basically the Catholic Mass, in Latin. Hell. My mother, who had no desired to read Joyce, basically laughed at me when I showed her and she plucked it all out. "It's the Mass!" she said, whacking me in the back of the head.

Where are they? what the hell is this gunrest crap? Barbicans? Towr? WTF? ...well. Martello Tower. What other tower is there on the bay in Dublin? sheesh. everybody knows that

Why's he wearing black, and saying he can't wear grey pants? Jesus. I'm two paragraphs in and sinking fast. ...well, his mother died. When someone was wearing black then, it wasn't a fashion choice. You automatically assumed the person was in mourning.

And so (to beat this to death), Joyce doesn't trip over himself explaining this stuff. The characters do not think to themselves for the purposes of letting us in on things, or for explanation's sake, they simply think the way you do, to yourself. You don't use full sentnces, or explain to yourself what you already know.

So you aren't going to get a line from Joyce that says:

"Buck Mulligan, a guy who is kinda fun on the surface but is really just a blowhard ass, and who is taking from Stephen what he can get (lodging, beer money, and intelligence-cred, among other things), comes from the stairwell getting ready to shave, but first goofs around by pretending he's a priest and so (blasphemously) holds up the shaving cream in a bowl like the sacraments held aloft by a priest, and says "Coming to the altar of God", only in Latin."

This is why the book benefits from a little view behind the curtains. Because as u/danuscript says, except for Joyce, no real all-knowing reader exists. There's also no reliable narrator running consistently throughout who can hold our hand.

It's essentially unfolding in little vignettes seen though others' eyes, or from an uninterested narrator (objective as possible).

So, grab the Gifford annotated volume (the bigger thicker one HERE ). But realize you don't need EVERY notation here to understand it. And some are speculative. really, does the yellow color of the dressing gown warrant three paragraphs? A lot of folks have read in more than joyce may have intended.

Also, try the "New BloomsDay Book". It is is an excellent synopsis, with as much exposition as is needed to understand the meat, and what is happening.

Last... the book is NOT meant to be a one hit wonder. It's not a beginning/middle/end thing, which is read once, and whose 'climax' is some great revelation or surprise. It's meant to be re-read. You would then understand the subtle unsaid things (e.g. which occur in interactions between people, which hinge on these), and you'll understand what's happening which you will have missed the first time through.

And skip.

There. I said it. Bogging down? Eyes glazing over? Try skipping a bit, or reading the first and last line of the medium-sized paragraphs. No shame in it.

If you find that you like the language, are getting the story (with help), and are glad you waded in, then you'll likely be back for a second read, and that can be the one where you focus, and delve, and read each line.

Took me three times, frankly, to make it through.

But I was aware that it wasn't Joyce's failings. but mine, which kept stopping me.

There really is a there there.


u/chasonreddit · 1 pointr/AskReddit

If you really hope to finish, I suggest the Bloomsday Book.

I think anyone who says they just read through it, finished, and enjoyed the book is a liar. That said, it's worth the effort to understand, and the companion book helps a whole lot.

u/insanepurpleducky · 1 pointr/books

I would strongly recommend having this: guidebook by your side, its pretty cool to be able to understand what the hell is going on :)
(makes me think of that Marx brothers scene where Chicos trying to con Groucho into buying all those horse racing books)

u/Vidyadhara · 1 pointr/books

I should have been clearer. I'm referring to a kind of commentary. The New Bloomsday Book: A Guide Through Ulysses

Chapter by chapter it summarizes the theme and the plot. It's admirable that you want to read it on your own. However, unless you're a Joyce-scholar who somehow hasn't read Ulysses, you're going to find that you need support.

u/drewcordes · 1 pointr/literature
u/NickSWilliamson · 1 pointr/ulysses

Yes, please join us at /r/jamesjoyce. You'll get lots of tips and can ask questions all day long.

In the meantime, here's what worked for me: get one of those audio book versions, for instance, the version we link and read along. That way, you see the words, feel them as they unfold in the book--but, at the same time, you have a professional voice actor relating mood and tempo and pronouncing those tough words. Also, the listening goes much more quickly than reading--you can finish the book in a matter of days--and the ineluctable pull of somebody reciting keeps your motivation up.

Here's another tip: center yourself with a guide such as Harry Blamires's The New Bloomsday Book...he doesn't get everything right, but it gives you a good sense of what's going on.

...Or, watch the wonderful 1967 film, Ulysses, with Milo O'Shea.

Good luck and hope to see you at /r/jamesjoyce!

u/PortenousAugury · 1 pointr/todayilearned

It's a separate book.

https://www.amazon.com/New-Bloomsday-Book-Routledge-International/dp/0415138582

I should start some kind of reddit book club. I'm actually not teaching right now. Health issues.