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review 2019-07-23 00:00
Ulysses
Ulysses - James Joyce

This book was so impressive in many ways, but especially in its scope. Its scope of language uses/styles, of perspectives, of allusions. It has literally everything.

I loved how in chapter nine when they're discussing Shakespeare, an attendant comes and announces people, just like in the plays. There's a lot of clever literary stuff in the chapter. I also liked how I learned a lot of Irish history as a result of reading.

Reading the Shmoop summaries and analyses after each chapter helped me understand what was going on a lot more. I also kept Google Translate handy for the many non-English phrases.

 

A couple quotations I really liked:

The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus.

I love this. I love the idea of ritualistically imbibing a "sacred" drink to "unbind" a tongue. And this really becomes true later in the book when Stephen gets shitfaced drunk and makes a fool of himself at a brothel.

Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.

This is the reader's introduction to one of the main characters. How awesome of a line is that!

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review 2019-02-26 16:39
Flora & Ulysses Are Extraordinary!
Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures - L.K. Campbell,Kate DiCamillo

Young Flora is a little girl with an obsession with her comics that her father introduced her to. Reading them is a nice distraction from her parents being separated. She lives solely with her mother who is a writer and thinks the comics are not good enough for her daughter. Outside Flora house, an unusual accident with a squirrel and vacuum cleaning salesman creates a superhero. The squirrel, whom Flora named Ulysses, can now fly, has super strength and writes badly spelled poetry. What happens next can only be described as an extraordinary tale just like her comics.

Like most Kate DiCamillo books Flora & Ulysses has whimsical storytelling, fun characters, and so much heart. I have to say my favorite character was Ulysses the squirrel. He did not say much but he sounds like a smart, cute, and fluffy friend to have around.

My least favorite thing was Flora’s mother. She reminded me of Cinderella’s stepmother. She did not understand her daughter nor did it seem she wanted to. She was so unkind with Flora and even though her personality changed I still felt she was not to be trusted.

I have read almost all of Kate DiCamillo’s books and I am not stopping after this one. Her characters are always different and quirky. There is always a calming comfy feeling when reading them. Even though she writes for children I would recommend her books for all age.

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review 2019-01-20 22:52
Out this week
Telemachus Vol 1: In Search of Ulysses - Kid Toussaint,Kenny Ruiz

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley

I do have to wonder why a Greek girl would be wearing something like Polycaste does, but over all this is a pretty interesting re-imagining of the story of Odysseus. It focuses on Telemachus and his quest to find out what happened to his father. The driving impulse seems to be the idea that his mother is thinking about remarrying, which is actually a refreshing change from the original.

Telemachus is somewhat like an ancient version of Captain America, but he gets together a pretty interesting group of Aveneg. . . er companions – including a son of enemy of Odysseus.

The art is cute, almost like anime, but it works and fits the story. Readers should play attention because they are some really nice lines that minor characters have. While not entirely true to the works of Homer, this is a really fun read and would be a good introduction to the Matter of Troy for a child.

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text 2019-01-19 20:45
The annoying limitation of published book reviews
The Annotated Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant - Ulysses S. Grant,Elizabeth D. Samet

Last month a new annotated edition of Ulysses Grant's memoirs was published by Liveright. So far it's getting positive reviews, and though I read the Library of America edition a couple of years ago the idea of reading an annotated edition explaining the elements that eluded me the last time around is appealing.

 

The problem is, it's not the only annotated edition that has recently been published, as Belknap Press recently came out with one edited by Grant scholar John Marszalek that was also greeted with acclaim. I plan on sitting down some time soon with them to figure out which to read, only I'm annoyed at having to do so at all. Because for all of the reviews that have bene published about the Liveright edition, not a single one so far has bothered to even mention the one from Belknap, much less compare the two. What's the point of reviewing a new edition of a book if it isn't going to be compared to its predecessors? Is that really asking too much of a reviewer?

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review 2018-12-07 08:14
Coloured Unicorns: "Allusions in Ulysses: An Annotated List" by Weldon Thornton
Allusions in Ulysses: An Annoted List - Weldon Thornton

(Original Review, 1991-03-18)


I had the good fortune to read “Ulysses” in my late teens without knowing much of its reputation other than that Anthony Burgess, an author whose novels I was enjoying at the time, recommended it highly. I read it as basically a comic novel, sometimes drunk with its author’s learning, sometimes just drunk. Our local library had a book, “Allusions in Ulysses” which ran to several hundred pages, explicating literary, historical, and cultural references in the book – I used it to translate the foreign phrases scattered through the book, but otherwise did not worry about catching the many other references.
 
 
If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review.
 
 

 

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