I really wanted to like it, but for the most part I only found it boring -- and Stephen insufferable. At one point I started to like it, though, and since I have a Kindle I can tell that it was about 75% into the novel when I began to enjoy the experience. 
 When I don't like books by authors as recognized like Joyce I feel like it's my fault, that I should had put more interest in it and really try. But really, shouldn't the book have interested me? It was confusing and obnoxious; what I liked is the ideas you extract from it --the contradictions of a society discourse materialized in a boy--, not the book itself, and certainly, not Stephen Dedalus.