Ulysses

It's fair to say I wasn't overly impressed with "Ulysses" - if it hadn't been on The List I would have abandoned it fairly quickly. It is, by far, the toughest book I've ever read, and while I have very definitely read it, it's also fair to note that I've read it only in a strict sense of that word.

Boiling it down, my view is this: some novels are written simply to tell a story, some are written to explore a theme or otherwise make a point. "Ulysses" seems to have been written to experiment with the use of words themselves - it's very much in the Modernist tradition. But the net effect of that is that it renders the plot largely incomprehensible and the theme, if indeed there is one, entirely irrelevant. And, as such, while I can see the value of the work as an experimental piece, and indeed as an object to be studied, I'm afraid I find very little merit in it as a novel.

That said, I did have a chuckle at one section where two characters were discussing the merits of Irish independence, which did feel oddly familiar...