Holy cow. I cannot believe I finished this whole book. I should get a medal. Or at least a merit badge. 
 The short version of my review: 
 I liked it a lot, but it was a lot of work. The most delightful thing about Ulysses is that in the mumble-mumble years since I got my B.A. in English, I'd forgot that this was a way that novels could be written. There's a playfulness in Ulysses between author, character, and reader that I'd not experienced in a long time. 
 I read the Vintage Classics Edition printed in 1990 from a 1961 edition. I chose this edition because it's the one that Roof Beam Reader is reading for the Ulysses read-along and the typeface seemed like it would be easy to read. (While reading Pilgrim's Progress earlier this year, I realized just how important typeface is to me when I read classics. The text itself is challenge enough; I don't need to be further hampered by unpleasant type.) 
 I began reading the book without any helps besides a quick gander at an online annotated version so I could jot down the chapter names at the beginning of each chapter. I didn't want any help on my first reading. I wanted to form my own impressions and come to my own conclusions before I read anyone else's ideas---and there are many, many other ideas about Ulysses out there. 
 This worked fine for the first four chapters---Nestor, Proteus, Calypso, and Lotus-Eaters. These chapters seemed fairly...normal. I liked the writing, and while some of the internal/external shifts were a little confusing, I felt like I had a handle on things. 
 It's in Nestor that one of my favorite passages in the novel appears. Stephen is in his classroom observing a young student who's come to his desk asking for help with a math problem: 
 Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him under foot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. (p 27) 
 Then Stephen goes on to reflect about the absence of his own recently deceased mother, which makes the passage even more poignant. 
 You can find the full review on my blog.