[sun surfer]

After all, can it ever really be conquered by the likes of mere mortals?

But, I read every word even if I didn't understand it all, so that counts well enough, right?

To put things into perspective, I've been attempting to read this book, off and on, for over 15 years. I've tried all kinds of ways of reading it. My last attempt, last year, I bought Ulysses Annotated as well, which is a separate book of annotations about as long as the book itself. I actually made it a good ways through, and it was the first time I even halfway understood what was going on. And not only halfway; with the detailed annotations on almost every line I understood everything that I'd read. Trust me, everything.

But, it also meant that I had to go back and forth between the two books every line, and so a book that was already a very slow read became an extremely extremely slow and laborious read. So, I gave it up.

This year I was (again) determined to tackle this book, and this time my motto was to head-butt my way through it like a ram. No annotations to help me, and even unlike other books I read, I wouldn't even look up dictionary words or sometimes google or wikipedia something. None of that. I started from the beginning again, so I already understood a good ways into it, but when I made my way into uncharted territories things got trippy. I did resort to short chapter summaries online after I read a chapter, so I could at least sort-of understand what the chapter was supposed to be about. That came in handy for one or two chapters where I had almost no idea what I was reading until I read the summary of it at the end.

And so, did I hate it? Not at all! Actually, I loved it! Certainly there's a lot I didn't understand, and I didn't like how vulgar it became at times in the some of the last chapters, and some chapters I was not a fan of at all, but I really, really loved it overall. It's a masterpiece and I'd recommend it to anyone willing to battle with it.