A Word about Ulysses

And the word is, 'No'!

I'm sorry. It's indecipherable, insufferable and incredibly tedious. I've read a third of it (which is more than my aunt who used to work for the Oxford English Dictionary so *must* be clever) and I just can't face any more. I might skim bits and I'll read the chapters I have to for the MA, but I just can't punish myself any longer. I'm really starting to wonder what I did to deserve such torture.

Abandoning a book halfway through is something I hate doing, along with most people. But lately I've really started to relax my morals. Life is so short, that I have to wonder what the point is of slogging through an utterly miserable and life-stealing read just for the sake of getting to the end.

So James Joyce can loiter beside Erica Jong in my recent abandoned books pile, and they are welcome to see what they make of each other. Not that I think they'll get on. James will doubtless be horrified at all her nasty little Americanisms, and Erica will be equally up in arms at James' atrocious representations of women. Ho hum.

On the plus side - 'The Brontës went to Woolworths' arrived yesterday and I can't wait to get started on it in my lunchbreak today. I'm so excited. Not least because 1) it has the beautiful cover I mentioned yesterday, 2) Rachel Ferguson *must* be a great writer if Persephone endorse her, 3) all the Googling I've done on the book has made it seem like a cult read, and 4) the out-of-print edition I have is published by Virago Modern Classics seems to be a blueprint for the Persephone way of thinking.