It's funny that I really thought the writing in Dubliners was excellent. I also really thought Joyce painted some very compelling tales for various early 20th Century lower to middle class urban dwellers. My main drawback was that apart from character names, and of course names of geographic locations, there was little in most of the stories that to me said Dublin, or even Ireland. Most could have just as well been in any large port city of the time such as London or even New York. I am looking forward to O'Connor.