Yes! Third time's the charm. So I guess it's true in many ways that you don't read Ulysses, you re-read it. Because I re-read those first 200-ish pages many times. But also (Yes) it seems like a novel you really should read twice to have a fair shot at absorbing a decent amount of it. I read it along with my BFF from grad school, which helped a lot, and we just let it wash over us without worrying a whole lot about references, aligning it with The Odyssey, following the action at all times, etc.

As a story (Yes) I was very interested in Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and Molly, and what would happen to them. Bloom was disgusting and sympathetic in an Everyman but also a Forever Outsider, tenderhearted way. Molly was complicated and got to love sex without really being condemned for it. And Stephen Dedalus hits close to home for some of us.

Having taught a year-long History of the English Novel a few times (which includes Portrait of the Artist) the more I read Ulysses the more essential it felt to get through it. As experimental as it may be, Ulysses also feels like the early novels of the 17th century, putting a bunch of totally disparate types of writing together and calling it a single text. And also trying to figure out to keep burrowing more deeply into the mind of a totally ordinary person. Though Joyce also has both bigger ambitions and more skepticism about his project.

Anyway (yes!) read it if you want to. It was worth the effort.