Good for you, sun surfer. It's a lot to take on independently. I first read it as a freshman in college, which helped
a lot, because of both the exigesis and the compulsion. I tried it again a few years later, to see how it went on my own, and was happy to discover that it's a good story, but the initial exposure made a big difference.
I haven't been very tempted to dip into it since, however, and
Finnegan's Wake is a book too far for me.