Throughout my life, I've started some rather strange reading habits. In elementary school, my friends would call me the book hopper. I was given this title because, when we were supposed to read fiction books, I would switch to another book if I didn't like the first few pages. Evidently, this has stuck with me, as I have switched my book choice multiple times prior to starting this blog. Additionally, when reading, I would sometimes stare at a page or read a paragraph, and gather absolutely nothing. This wasn't because I necessarily didn't understand the material, but it was rather because my mind would go on autopilot, and drift off. This tendency, in particular, I've been trying to fight due to how much trouble it causes me when working on timed assignments in class.
During this project, I developed newer habits that assisted me in reading through book as challenging as Ulysses. I had to do a lot of outside research to understand some of the Greek phrases James Joyce used, as well as mentions of Greek Mythology. For example, on the first page, I came across the phrase, "Introibo ad altar Dei," which translates to, I will go up to the altar of God. This really threw me off when I first came across it. I'd find myself looking up Greek phrases and mythological imagery on the internet only to find that I'd end up doing the same after reading just two pages. If I really stuck true to my old and stubborn book hopping, I wouldn't get past the first page. I guess I could say that I managed to "up" my reading endurance.
I was also bit overwhelmed with the amount of detail that James Joyce put into every page. In fact, Joyce's word choice beautifully described a death so gruesome and morbid, that it even managed to greatly unsettle me:
"Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet in the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she [his mother] had come to him after death, her wasted body within its loose brown grave clothes giving off an odor of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint dour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffed he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the welded voice beside him. the ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting."
After I read through 20 pages, I got used to Joyce's complex language, which helped immensely with the speed in which I had to create this blog, as well as the other two.
Never more will I feel more satisfaction when I finish a book as beautifully crafted as Ulysses.
During this project, I developed newer habits that assisted me in reading through book as challenging as Ulysses. I had to do a lot of outside research to understand some of the Greek phrases James Joyce used, as well as mentions of Greek Mythology. For example, on the first page, I came across the phrase, "Introibo ad altar Dei," which translates to, I will go up to the altar of God. This really threw me off when I first came across it. I'd find myself looking up Greek phrases and mythological imagery on the internet only to find that I'd end up doing the same after reading just two pages. If I really stuck true to my old and stubborn book hopping, I wouldn't get past the first page. I guess I could say that I managed to "up" my reading endurance.
I was also bit overwhelmed with the amount of detail that James Joyce put into every page. In fact, Joyce's word choice beautifully described a death so gruesome and morbid, that it even managed to greatly unsettle me:
"Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet in the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she [his mother] had come to him after death, her wasted body within its loose brown grave clothes giving off an odor of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint dour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffed he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the welded voice beside him. the ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting."
After I read through 20 pages, I got used to Joyce's complex language, which helped immensely with the speed in which I had to create this blog, as well as the other two.
Never more will I feel more satisfaction when I finish a book as beautifully crafted as Ulysses.
Comments
Post a Comment