Ulysses' Reference Shelf

I've consolidated, I believe, everyone's recommendations. Please add any I may have overlooked or others that come to mind.

A Key to the Ulysses of James Joyce -- Paul Jordan Smith
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -- James Joyce
Allusions in Ulysses -- Weldon Thornton
The Bloomsday Book -- Harry Blamires
The Catechism of the Catholic Church of Rome
Compact Oxford English Dictionary
The Divine Comedy -- Dante Alighieri
Hamlet -- William Shakespeare
James Joyce -- Richard Ellmann
James Joyce's Ulysses -- Stuart Gilbert
James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses -- Frank Budgen
King James Bible
The Odyssey - Homer
Re Joyce - Anthony Burgess
Ulysses (optional text: Gabler ed.)
Ulysses (optional text: audio cd)
Ulysses (corrected, 1961 text)
Hugh Kenner's Ulysses
Ulysses Annotated -- Don Gifford

for fun:

Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors
Into Thin Air -- Jon Krakauer

A few other major secondary works I'd add:

James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays -- An episode-by-episode analysis by some of the most respected Joyce critics. Of major note are Adaline Glasheen's essay on "Calypso," Clive Hart's essay on "Wandering Rocks," David Hayman on "Cyclops," James S. Atherton on "The Oxen of the Sun," and Hugh Kenner on "Circe."

James Joyce's Dublin: A Topographical Guide to the Dublin of Ulysses by Ian Gunn and Clive Hart -- An exhaustive revision to the previous Topographical Guide put out by Hart and Leo Knuth by Newslitter publications that maps and charts every little movement Bloom and Stephen make.

Epic Geography: James Joyce's Ulysses by Michael Seidel -- Similar in some respects to the Topographical Guide, but brilliantly analyzes Joyce's use of Victor Bérard's Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée.

Ulysses: Mechanics of Meaning by David Hayman -- An important analysis of Ulysses; one that introduced Hayman's spectacular theory of Joyce's "arranger" who, according to Hayman, becomes a wholly new method of narration after the novel's halfway point (or, namely, after "Wandering Rocks").

Joyce and Shakespeare: A Study in the Meaning of Ulysses by William M. Schutte -- A largely exhaustive study of how the Bard effuses this novel as a whole (well beyond the Library and a Nighttown reflection)

Obviously, one can keep adding more and more to this list, there being so much extraordinary scholarship devoted to this book. There's Karen Lawrence and S. L. Goldberg and James H. Maddox, etc., etc., and this isn't even touching on the remarkable studies of the manuscripts.

For anyone interested, one of my tags in my LibraryThing account is devoted to Ulysses criticism: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ImNotDedalus&tag=ulysses%2Bcriticism

Also, there's a massive online bibliography now available on the web through the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in collaboration with the Pennsylvania State University Libraries and the James Joyce Quarterly. It's called the James Joyce Checklist: http://research.hrc.utexas.edu/jamesjoycechecklist/index.cfm

This is like having our own personal Joyce scholar w/out having to pay a thousand bucks per unit. I love it!

Aww, you're too kind. Although I've devoted myself to Joyce and his critics, I'll never be dismissive enough of other peoples' opinions about his works to be one of them...hmmm, that's a bit dismissive, as it is.

His works are still largely a wonderful mystery to me. In Ulysses, for example, just when you think you've pinned Joyce down in "Cyclops," that you think you've deduced that this book is essentially a tome to the importance of "love," that damned arranger pops up and mocks it, all concepts, and especially the concept that you thought it proper to deduce any concept, at all, from the work. All I've found I can do, in the end, is laugh.

(An aside: For some reason, my previous post wouldn't link to Schutte's important book, so hopefully this will do it: Joyce and Shakespeare: A Study in the Meaning of Ulysses. EDIT: Hmm, guess it didn't work. Not sure why. Anyway, Schutte (accidentally?) convinced me that this Irishman really is Shakespeare's successor in prose. That's puttin' it a bit thick, ain't it!)

Close to the himalaya, you have a better view on the Mountain from the smaller, hilltops, peaks etc that suround it. On the Everest you are too busy surviving and suffering to enjoy the experience.

With Ulysses and Finegans , it is the same. Stay away from these books but do read all the comments and critics around it. It is more fun and you have a better view of these monuments.

And yes krakauer's book might be a good start : )

Thanks for joining us Macumbeira! It sounds like you may have some personal experience or knowledge of Everest firsthand perhaps? Do tell, if so. I've never been atop anything higher than California's Mt. Whitney, so I must live vicariously through other's accounts when it comes to the likes of Everest or K2.