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Best audio book ulysses6/17/2023 The narrators accents and infusion of life and character into the text were wonderful. The book is NOT AN EASY LISTEN - it requires and deserves a lot of concentration which many folks wont be interested in giving it - it took me a long time to get through, but it was entirely worth it and I doubt if I would have had the stamina to read through the book. Some of the passages were in turn hilarious and disturbing - I was constantly impressed by the narrators skills. The Irish accents of each character were deftly done and easy to identify for without the changes in irish dialect for different characters it would have been very difficult to follow - this book is like Shakespeare - easier followed when performed than when read. This book was well worth the money and time invested - a master work which was read accurately and in keeping with the spirit and culture of the writer. I will certainly be returning to this reading! This really is one of those books worth coming back to. Every reading will bring out more subtleties and enjoyment. If you've never read it before do at least skim the basics of the story first so you appreciate the basic structure - and then plunge in and enjoy and imbibe the language and scatological humour. But almost every chapter has some brilliant passage. The last section as Molly describes why she married and has stuck with Bloom. Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you? It is difficult to imagine it will ever be bettered. Wonderful characterisation, pace, humour, accents and invective. Jim Norton's (and Marcella Reardon) reading adds immensely to an appreciation. What does Jim Norton bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book? Once you have a grounding you really appreciate the full force of its brilliance.īloom: an outsider, cuckold and under-dog, but persistent and dogged, he wins through in the end. It helped that I'd read this book previously and had done some study on how it has been interpreted. Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why? One of the best audiobooks I’ve ever listened to. This is a monumental achievement in audiobook recording that cuts no corners, takes all the time it needs in the right places, and uses technology and vision to create an unforgettable listening experience. Narrated by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan, it is an unabridged recording (27 hours and 21 minutes) that has not only been expertly read, it’s actually recorded and mixed wonderfully, and it’s amongst the best audiobooks I’ve ever encountered. His words float, soar and swerve, and I think we are incredibly lucky to have an audiobook of the work that is without equal. There is something about Joyce’s language and his way of expressing things that lends beautifully to performance. I like reading "Ulysses", but equally I love listening to it. When it comes to Joyce’s great work, a colossus among the colossals, it’s quite impossible to write about the reading experience succintly, to the point, and well. Both are needed, courage and joy, since the most challenging works of literature should be enjoyable in their difficulty. "Grant me, Lord, the courage and the joy / I need to scale the summit of this day”, wrote Jorge Luis Borges of "Ulysses" in one of his sonnets. It is entertaining, immediate, funny, and rich in classical, philosophical, and musical allusion. In the hands of Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan, experienced and stimulating Joycean readers, and carefully directed by Roger Marsh, Ulysses becomes accessible as never before. While Bloom's passionate wife, Molly, conducts yet another illicit liasion (with her concert manager), Bloom finds himself getting into arguments with drunken nationalists and wild carousing with excitable medical students, before rescuing Stephen Dedalus from a brawl and returning with him to his own basement kitchen. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century.
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