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Just keep pushing. That's how I finally, officially read Ulysses. I've never regretted it and it remains my favorite novel.

I started one summer in college and made a valiant effort but I knew most of it was going over my head. When the new semester started I abandoned it without getting past "Proteus". I made a second attempt just after college but failed again. It was always there, taunting me. Finally, around eight or ten years ago I decided, come hell or high water, I was going to read it. I just felt in my gut there was something special about it.

I don't remember where but somewhere I read that I should skip the Telemachiad altogether and begin with Episode 4: "Calypso". I didn't even know there was another protagonist or that I would grow to love Bloom so much. From there I did the best I could and powered through. It was fairly straight forward until Stephen re-enters the story briefly in "Aeolus" and more significantly in "Scylla and Charybdis".

I think I skipped "Oxen of the Sun" altogether and flipped-over huge sections of "Circe" but The Nostos and especially "Ithaca" really brought me back. I finished, I had supposed. I did it.

I took a break for a few years. I read some other things but still felt like I had not really read Ulysses. There were parts I skipped, things I missed. I felt like I didn't really even know what it was about, just a couple of guys on a random day in Dublin, and so I decided I was going back in.

This time I got the Gifford book, Allusions in Ulysses a copy of the Gabler edition as well as 1961 corrected edition and decided to investigate every reference, each footnote, every line, find every song and get every joke. I found pages like Joyce Images and The Joyce Project to help visualize things. I purchased old copies of James Joyce Quarterly from eBay, Abe Books and other places to read articles that interested me. As I completed each Episode, I listened to the Naxos audiobook as a refresher. I lived and breathed Ulysses. I dedicated around an hour or so most nights, just before or after dinner and the majority of every weekend. I bored my SO to death talking about it. Sometimes I stopped to read other, related works, biographies and Shakespeare mostly but a little history slipped in too. I left all my notes right in the margin (I have small print) and eventually my copy split into two volumes. For a short while I was roped into Frank Delany's podcast, which is excellent but just moved too slow for me. This time I didn't just read it. I consumed it.

Reading Ulysses was one of the best reading experiences of my life. In hindsight I should have blogged while I read but I was too busy exploring Ulysses to bother keeping an account of my quest. I hope you stick with it. I'll check here from time to time to see your progress. I encourage you to try but know that if you don't make it all the way this time, there's always another year, another chance. I feel like Ulysses came to me at just the right time. I had tried before and I wasn't ready. I was tested and failed. When I finally did it, I was older, more patient, more mature, I had a lit degree under my belt and a pretty decent background in Literature and history. I had the time to investigate, translate, research. There's a lot of jokes in Ulysses but you miss them because you have to look-up the reference and you forget to laugh. Don't forget to laugh. It's a funny book. It's also a very moving book. At it's core it is about a father looking for son and a son looking for a father.

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!