It took me literally decades to start reading Ulysses, but I finally did it. When I started reading more "serious" books, the only Portuguese translation available was in Brazilian Portuguese, that I dislike, so I never read it. Later, when I became able to read fluently in English, I lacked for a long time the courage to tackle such a long and famously difficult text - I bought it in 2007 but it stayed on the shelf all these years. Was it worth the wait? Sometimes I didn't think so, but in the end I'm glad I read it, not only because I would always feel I should have read such a famously celebrated work. It's certainly not an easy read. Several times I had to struggle to get by, but it actually got easier along the way, and the final impression was rather positive.
It's certainly a work of genius, the writing is amazing, in several different styles, extremely rich and clever. I'm not so familiar with the Odyssey to be able to recognise many of the episodes, but the narrative is nevertheless interesting and fetching by itself. So why not give it 5 stars? Because in some way it felt somewhat dated. I'm sure it must have been a remarkable breakthrough at the time, due to the the frankness of the narrative and the experimental style, but 100 years later, after so many stream-of-consciousness and experimental books, after Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Mikhail Bulgakov, etc, it doesn't convey anymore the kind of shock it must have done at the time it was written, and those other many books can connect with us today more easily than Ulysses - at least, that's my opinion, that's how I felt about it.
Anyway, it's still worth reading, if for no other reason for the incredible and beautiful mastery of the English language, it must have been one of the most impressive books I have read in that regard.
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