I’ve been delaying this post for a while now so now I’m here just going for it. My original plan for this post was to summarize what I’ve read so far and talk about when I were to continue reading it. However, the more I look and reread previous chapters the more it feels futile. So, now this.

As of writing this post, I am somewhere along chapter 7, more commonly referred to as Aeolus. It has taken me about a month to read 104 pages of Ulysses by taking my time, rereading chapters (especially chapter 3, Proteus), and summarizing what I read. The problem for me however is, nothing really happens in Ulysses or to put it bluntly fuck all happens in Dublin.

It really is just a slice of life of these characters and how they go through their day. Granted there are some interesting occurrences and Joyce writes some great lines along the way but other than that it feels like it is even harder to read than Nausea. Just like with that book it feels like “the opposite of a page turner”. It feels like I’m going mad when people ask me “how’s the book?” or “what’s it about?” because honestly, not much and I don’t really know how to feel about it except that I am sort of exhausted.

Maybe I am looking too far into it. Maybe I should just go page by page but this book is like 600+ pages long and I’m fairly sure uranium has a shorter half-life than it would take me to casually read and finish this book by going page by page.

That is not to say I am giving up. This is me saying I am taking a break of this book to prioritize reading something else so I can recharge and continue reading Ulysses on a later point.

To recharge I will be reading White Noise by Don DeLillo for the book club I infrequently attend xd (Bored to Death book club, kind of fitting with my current situation of Ulysses hahaha). I need some time to just read something more casual. From what I’ve seen so far it does go quite deep but I highly doubt it will be harder than this.

Maybe later I will add some more of my insights about the chapters here or in a future post. For now, see yaaaa.