Ulysses by James Joyce My rating: 4 of 5 stars I first read Ulysses almost thirty-five years ago, when I was roughly the same age as Stephen Dedalus - one of the first characters we meet in the book. I was backpacking across Indonesia on the cheap with a friend, eating Gado-Gado and Nasi Goreng, and climbing volcanoes. In Sumatra, where I first opened the pages of the book, a cramped day-long mini-bus odyssey across the equatorial jungle cost a few dollars, accommodation a dollar, lunch just 25 cents. In truth, I enjoyed the sights and sounds and smells and tastes of Indonesia more than I enjoyed the book back then, and I recall swapping the finished book with some satisfaction at one of the many travellers' shops for a couple of Julian Barnes’s novels. ‘Look, it’s almost 1000 pages, that must be worth two books.’ Ulysses is this year’s family project - we intend to visit Dublin on Bloomsday, the long summer day when the book's protagonist jo...