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It’s been a bit of a busy (ahem….chaotic) summer in the Married Book Nerds house. It’s all good stuff, but there has been little time to read (boo!) or to blog (boo-er!)

I decided it was high time to get back in the saddle on that.

I was reading a non-fiction book that was good, but with all the busy-ness my brain wasn’t having it. So I decided to pick up some light and fun beach reads. Now, I’m used to big city life where there is a bookstore on every corner. Not so much here. I raided the local Target stores bookshelves – which honestly – didn’t too bad of a selection. Sure I could have ordered something online, or even got an e-book. But I was in the mood for a tactile experience – looking at the books and touching the books (wow, that sounds weird and inappropriate). Anyway, you book nerds get where I am coming from.

I hadn’t read anything by Ms Andrews before, but the cover and the blurb on the back looked like it was going to fit the bill. Fluffy enough for my addled mind, but with a bit of texture to it to not be boring. And, dear reader of the blog, I was not wrong.

This started out a bit odd, I will say. I was a bit confused by the characters and it didn’t seem like it was going to gel for me. But by page 20 it was all good. So if you decide to take this one to the beach, give it a bit of time.

This is kind of a romance, mystery, sister-of-the-travelling-pants kind of story. There is an aging millionaire lady who summons the local new kid on the block lawyer to her island home. Basically she is dying – the aging millionaire lady – and wants to make amends to her group of friends from back in the day.

As I said, there is enough texture in this book to keep it interesting and intriguing. I don’t want to spill the beans on that and #spoileralert it for anyone.

This was definitely a great beach/summer read – short chapters for when you need to take a break and have a nap or a cocktail.

I rated it 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.

I’ve read the next two “chapters” (or whatever they are called) in Ulysses, which means I  finished the first part. Whew. This is one weird book.

The second chapter was fairly straightforward – Stephen went to work where he is a teacher, the kids went out to play some sport, he helped some kid with his homework, then he had a conversation with his headmaster and got paid. Then we got to the third chapter where I was like…..WTF.

As an aside, BJ had researched the book and how to read it and came across ‘The New Bloomsday Book’ that is a companion to Ulysses. So we got it. I decided that I was going to try to read each chapter without help and then consult the Bloomsday. So I’ve been reading it after the chapters to see if I was close at understanding them, and I was, kinda sorta.  As they say, best laid plans…

About halfway through chapter 3, I tapped out and read the Bloomsday companion. The challenge with this chapter is that it’s pretty much an internal dialogue from Stephen. On the upside, it made me feel better about my own mental state and internal monologue. (That Dedalus dude has some issues!) Reading the companion for this one really helped. Like BJ’s experience re-reading chapter one after reading the companion, it went much more smoothly.

I know that I have a soft spot for Joyce, but I really do think he is a master craftsman. Much like I feel about Picasso. He had to be a master artist to be able to deconstruct his work enough to pull off cubism. And I think Joyce is the same. He is a master at words and crafting them to tell a story and that’s how he gets to write this book. He had to be able to understand language enough to deconstruct it and cobble it back together. His ability to paint a picture with words, is in my mind, extraordinary. I give you these sentences, as Dedalus is sitting on the beach watching a dog:

The dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing, on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The man’s shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks.

I don’t know about you, but I can hear, smell and see what is happening in that scene. You don’t get to pull that off if you are not a master of words.

The ultimate question of the novel becomes, is it worth it? Does the internal monologues, references to greek mythology and the crafty language build something that has meaning and heft to it. Or is it just showy, intellectual rubbish.

Time (and about 600 more pages will tell).

So, I’ve finished Episode 1, Telemachus.  Man, it was something else.  I had to read the section twice, with a quick reading of the Episode 1 recap in The New Bloomsday sandwiched in between.

This book earns its reputation for being hard to read.  Honestly, the first reading was like reading a book after all the words were dumped on the floor and slapped back together.  Very confusing and disorienting.  Barb joked by asking how many people were involved in the episode…when that’s where you are on basic facts, it isn’t going to be easy.  The problem is, I think I almost got into a fugue state as a reader–expecting things to be disorienting–but in reality, once you get oriented–once you look for the narrative and not the confusion–the story is actually more direct than it seemed.

So, I had gutted through.  The first section is 18 pages or so and it took me like three separate sittings to get through it.  If you want to call what I did getting through it.  I got to the last word.

Anyway, last night I picked up the New Bloomsday and read the summary of the episode–which is like five dense pages on its own–with the plan of starting episode 2.  Instead, just for fun, I read episode 1 again, and this time I read it like a normal 18 pages…in like 15 minutes, with flow and sense to it and I actually appreciated what people say about the book.  It was energetic and poetic and picturesque.  The use of language and metaphor is truly brilliant.  He can describe the changing sea landscape in more pitch perfect ways than I ever imagined could be done.  More on that later.

So this leaves me with two options.  One is to read the Bloomsday first and then the next episode.  Or, read the episode, and then Bloomsday and then read it again, which, as Barb points out, means I am going to read Ulysses twice.  She mentioned that it might get easier from here on in, now that I have cracked the code, that’s true, it might.

So, for episode 2 I’m going to try and do it the right way and read the text the first time in an uncoached fashion before reading the recap.  We’ll see.

One thing I did notice.  You absolutely have to read and focus on every word.  Lots of us scan/read, but that won’t work here.  The book requires your full attention because major changes drop in two words and in the flow of the narrative, without the signaling we have gotten used to.

On we go….

So, we’re back!  It’s time for the annual reading project…where Barb and I read a very long book that is considered to be unreadable.

The first was War and Peace.  Next, Infinite Jest, followed by The Brothers Karamazov.  This year it’s Ulysses.

I’m not going to lie.  This is the one I am most nervous about.  Ulysses is famously unreadable.  Major authors and literary figures–from Philip Roth to Virginia Woolf–have found it impossible to finish.  JOSE LUIS BORGES couldn’t finish it.  Have you ever read one of HIS books?  When I see it compared to The Waste Land, which I found impenetrable in college, I begin to shudder.

In fact, I re-read the Waste Land as a warm-up last week and it didn’t fill me with confidence.

A moment ago I told Barb that Ulysses is just words on a page…but who’s kidding who?

Of course, it’s no coincidence that we are starting today since it is Bloomsday.  June 16th is literally the day that is captured in the book.

I was reading around trying to find advice on how to read the book. First, as a digression, I found that Joe Biden, Pete Buttererergieg, and Beto O’Rourke (listed here in reverse order of insufferability) have been praising Ulysses.  Which we are not in favor of.  We don’t want to be trendy.

Anyway, my reading found two types of advice on how to read the book.  The first is to have the book open, with a Ulysses-companion on one side and a reader’s companion of literature on the other.

The other is recommended here by British Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who shows a touch for nuanced thought not seen during Question Time.  His advice:

But then “you stop trying to focus on the narrative and start just enjoying the vignettes”.

Or, just let the work wash over you, like a symphony or, more importantly, abstract art.  When you see this….

you feel what it makes you feel.  You don’t have to understand it.  And putting a bunch of academics between you and the work isn’t respectful of you, as a reader.

As delivered by Robert DeNiro in Analyze This, “a hard-on should be gotten honestly or it shouldn’t be gotten at all.”

Yes, I understand that Joyce has layered the work with a rich set of allusions that I’m likely not to catch.  That’s no crime…the only person to catch them all would have lived in Dublin in 1904.

So, my general practice is to read a section straight through, experientially.  Then, if you like, you can look back and see what was layered inside the section.  You just can’t read four words, look up the meaning and then pick it up again for another four words.  You won’t capture any of the famous rhythm of the book.

We picked the “Gabler Edition.”  This is a story in and of itself.  Apparently, previous editions of Ulysses contained a lot of mistakes, both from difficulty transcribing the original manuscripts and from Joyce’s lack of proofreading.  So Gabler decided to get a committee together and go through the whole thing line by line and fix what ended up being hundreds of mistakes.

At first, this was well received, but then there seems to have been a backlash about new mistakes being introduced, etc.  So far as I can see, knowledgable (let’s not say reasonable) people disagree, so we’re going to let it ride with Dr. Gabler.

One last thing.  The book is notable for being dirty and censored.  I hope I’m not too dense to find the dirty parts.  As Corbyn said:

You almost feel sorry for the censors who had to read and try and understand it, until they found something they deemed offensive.

No one said it would be easy.

So off we go.