Review: Ulysses Unbound: A Reader's Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses

Ulysses Unbound: A Reader's Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses by Terence Killeen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An excellent guide to a notoriously difficult classic. I re-read Ulysses earlier this year ahead of a family holiday in Dublin, timed to coincide with Bloomsday - the day the book is set in.

Killeen provides an easy and enjoyable way to distil the essence of Joyce’s masterpiece. His systematic approach to each episode (chapter) with a good and clear description of the Homeric parallels, should appeal to the novice Joycean (me) as well as more learned students of literature. I enjoyed walking through this book, as much as I did walking the scenes for real this June. We started off at the Martello tower - and after lunching in Sandymount, progressed through to Davy Byrnes for a glass of Burgundy. The book, of course, carries on to 2am, which is past my bedtime.

I have read Ulysses twice, in full chronological order, and collapsed exhausted at the end. A bit like travelling across Europe on an Inter-rail pass in my youth. Having now read the guide, I think I will dip into each episode again someday, as each episode is like a country that can be explored one at a time.

I liked the book a lot and gave it Five Stars.

View all my reviews

Comments

Review: A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence

A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins My rating: 3 of 5 stars The book offers an intriguing exploration into an alternate architecture of intelligence, drawing from Hawkin's extensive background in neuroscience and computing (he helped design the Palm Pilot). The book is divided into three parts, each tackling a distinct aspect of brain function and its implications for artificial intelligence and beyond. The book's first part is a compelling dive into the world of cortical columns. It focuses on the importance of the brain's cortex (the crumpled outer layer), which is thought to have evolved later than the older 'reptilian brain', which the author dismisses throughout the book (despite the fact it keeps him and other humans alive). Hawkins suggests that if you spread the brain's 'newer' neocortex out on a table into its 2.5mm thick extra-large pizza size, you would be looking at 150,000 simil...

Review: The Pot of Gold and Other Plays

The Pot of Gold and Other Plays by Plautus My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is the second set of Plautus plays translated by E.F Watling 60 years ago. Not as good as the first The Rope and Other Plays and more ribald. That said, the title play 'The Pot of Gold' is excellent as is 'Pseudolus' . Plautus often breaks the 'fourth wall', not just with the characters giving the prologue, or the cast giving an exhortation for applause (a device used by Shakespeare in Midsummer Nights Dream and The Tempest ), but by characters in the body of the play acknowledging what the audience does or does not already no. There are some clever stage devices: in The Swaggering Soldier , a connecting door allows for a farcical appearance and disappearance of twin sisters (the same person rushing from house to house), a technique that Alan Ayckbourn would likely admire. As with his other plays, the concept of Twins (real and imagined), wily slaves, a...

Review: Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It

Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It by Christof Koch My rating: 5 of 5 stars Christof Koch’s latest book gives a good overview of his work in neuroscience spanning several decades. Koch always likes a bet, and talks about settling his 25 year wager with David Chalmers: in June 2023 he handed over a case of fine Madeira wine for failing to have identified the neural correlates of consciousness in the preceding 25 years. He thinks he is closer in the elusive search for the seat of consciousness, with the hunt narrowing towards the back of the neocortex, and reckons the next 25 years or so should see it pinned down further. In terms of ‘how’ consciousness works, he is now a fervent advocate of the ambitious Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of Giuilio Tononi, a theory that more than 100 consciouness researchers have branded pseudoscience. The chapter on IIT is, unsurprisingly, the most dense. The rest of the book is ...

craig robert martin

Search This Blog