2024 Books
Originally published on my Facebook feed. *** Reflections on my 2024 reading: The most significant reading experience I had this year was James Joyce’s Ulysses . I call it a “reading experience” because I read and listened to the text, read Don Gifford’s book of annotations, Richard Elmann’s biography of Joyce, and revisited The Odyssey . Was all of it worth it? To quote from Ulysseys : “yes.” I felt like the book was one gigantic test, stretching my abilities of comprehension to new limits - in a way that was (mostly) enjoyable. I enjoyed reading Leopold Bloom’s odyssey around Dublin, his descent into Hades (a funeral), his encounter with the Sirens (barmaids), his battle with the Cyclops (a vicious anti-semite), Circe’s captivity (hallucinations in a brothel), and his return to Ithaca to reunite with Telamachus and Penelope (7 Eccles Street, Stephen and Molly). I enjoyed the way each chapter has its own style (the last one really is a fifty page long sentence), and trying to tea...