You can always wear an arachnid helmet <| sep |> Who gets time off for Halloween ? Or holidays generally ? <| sep |> Ha , Ambrose still hates the name James Dean . <| sep |> I ' m not American , but I love the food portion sizes in the US . <| sep |> And what do you say to the other mod unremoving it already , then you reremoving it ? <| sep |> If you ' re not used to Joyce ' s writing style , the majority of the book can be imposing and in general confusing and broken English . For getting used to his style of writing I ' d recommend ' A portrait of the artist as a young man ' and his ' Dubliners '. Both will get you used to his style while being easier to read not to mention Dubliners is arguably one of the best short story collections . As for the content of the book itself , if you haven ' t read Homer ' s Odyssey yet I highly highly highly recommend reading it first . A lot of Ulysses is based on chapters of the Odyssey , in fact a lot is making fun of situations of the Odyssey but in a day in Dublin and if you understand the references it can make the novel a lot more enjoyable . To summarize I ' d read The Odyssey and at least one of Joyce ' s easier novels minimum to get a good reading experience out of Ulysses , you could always read it with a reading companion book to help out but as you said you don ' t want to do that . Hope this helps !