Old Books, New Readers discussion

Our BOTM is Ulysses by James Joyce.

Post your conversations, debates, commentary, thoughts and more about the entirety of this book here. If you are having some issues, please refer to the background & resources post. There have been great annotations posted there to help you get through this book.

Background & Resources

I can’t find the post that shows what parts 1, 2, and 3 are. How are we dividing the book?

"Aside from three Book divisions clearly marked with I, II, and III, Joyce’s pages do not give the reader any way of naming a particular episode....A title schema drawn from Homer’s Odyssey has long stood in for this deficiency, at least for those who have studied Ulysses. But these names do not appear in the novel itself and are, therefore, useless Greek to the average reader encountering the novel for the first time."

Most editions have the three main parts/books recognized as described above.

For example, I have the Modern Library edition which indicates
Part 1 on page 3
Part 2 on page 55
& Part 3 on page 613.

Here is a proposition I found online indicating first words of each part/episode which I will include in each parts post.

[ Book I – The Telemachiad – episodes 1-3 ]
1 – Telemachus – “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan”
2 – Nestor – “You, Cochrane”
3 – Proteus – “Ineluctable modality of the visible”

[ Book II – The Odyssey – episodes 4-15 ]
4 – Calypso – “Mr. Leopold Bloom ate”
5 – Lotus Eaters – “By lorries along Sir John Rogerson’s”
6 – Hades – “Martin Cunningham, first”
7 – Aeolus – “IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN”
8 – Lestrygonians – “Pineapple rock. Lemon platt, butter scotch”
9 – Scylla and Charybdis – “Urbane, to comfort them”
10 – Wandering Rocks – “The Superior, the Very Reverend”
11 – Sirens – “Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons”
12 – Cyclops – “I was just passing the time of day”
13 – Nausicaa – “The summer evening had begun to fold”
14 – Oxen of the Sun – “Deshil Holles Eamus”
15 – Circe – “The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown”

[ Book III – The Nostos – episodes 16-18 ]
16 – Eumaeus – “Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed”
17 – Ithaca – “What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen”
18 – Penelope – “Yes because he never did a thing like that before”

This is extremely helpful - thank you for posting! I bought my own copy so that I can annotate on the pages. I'm going to add all of this into my copy of the book.

Try also “the critical companion to James Joyce” it’s filled with answers.

Thanks Elizabeth! This is how the Odyssey is set up too. Group: don’t get too hung-up with annotations. Tom

Elizabeth wrote: ""Aside from three Book divisions clearly marked with I, II, and III, Joyce’s pages do not give the reader any way of naming a particular episode....A title schema drawn from Homer’s Odyssey has lon..."

Thanks! What are the "deadlines" for each section?

Yes, I'd also like to know the deadlines so I know how to pace the reading!

Realistically you want to have finished part one already since part two is the bulk of the novel. I can give two more days for part one.

Part 1 Deadline: August 7th
Part 2 Deadline: August 24th
Part 3 Deadline: August 31st

never started reading book