The Best Book Ever?????

I tried, I really, really tried this time, but I still couldn't do it. As my family knows, I am a voracious reader, sometimes going through periods where I'll read a new book every two days. Vacation was like that this year, having read three books in five days. I don't usually like junk either, instead usually trying to read something that at least has some literary content (ok, my love for Steven King isn't exactly literary but long live the Gunslinger!). For the fourth time in as many years I made another attempt to read "Ulysses", supposedly the greatest book ever written. I don't know who did the voting, but they didn't ask me.

I like a good long read because it gives you a chance to really get into the characters and feel like you're living the story as it's happening. My fourth shot at "Ulysses" didn't get much further than the previous attempts. I made it to page 160 before I decided to throw it against the wall again. My copy looks well worn now but it's certainly not from reading the pages. I think it's because of the damage I do to it each time I get tired of attempting to get through Joyce's crap. I don't use that word lightly, but there it is. I've never been in a position where I was unable to finish a book, no matter how bad it was ( hey, I finished "His Dark Materials" even though I wanted to choke the writer when I was finished). No matter how hard I try I can't seem to get past his so called style. The story takes place in Dublin and is full of Irish terminology (not a problem in itself). The thing that makes it a difficult read is he mixes the real time story line with the random thoughts of the characters as they are going through they're day. At one point we have the pleasure of listening to a man's thoughts as he is taking a crap (there's that word again). The worst part of it all is that his punctuation is horrible. He uses dash lines in place of quotation marks and you can never tell when the character is talking or when he is just thinking. Too much information.

So here I stand, a beaten man. I think this may have been the last attempt at Joyce. Maybe it was my educational level and I'm just not capable of reading this. I'm so turned off to this book right now I won't even try to look at some of his other writing. At least until the next time I have nothing to read and look at the bookshelf and there it is.