Ulysses [Book Review]

Begin Rant:

I have no qualms about labeling James Joyce's Ulysses the most annoying, frustrating, waste-of-time book I have ever had the patience of Job to wade through. It weighs in at 933 pages, and before I began it I had often heard people say it's the one book they started and were unable to finish. Now I know why. Joyce's famous "stream of consciousness" style (a sample page is included in the photo here) is more accurately thought of as "stream of nonsense", and after 933 pages for the life of me I couldn't tell you what the plot of the book is. It starts with a funeral, and there's a sad-sack main character named Bloom and his slutty wife, and that's pretty much it: I was completely unable to discern anything happening. Many a night I was tempted to burn this book, throw it out the window, or crumple each individual page into a tiny ball and flush it down the toilet. Perhaps if I were to carefully study the book in Talmudic fashion over the course of several years, some amazing insight would come and I would realize I've been mistaken and short-sighted; but as far as I'm concerned, once is enough.

End Rant.