Dubliners

One of the books I'm least looking forward to on my list is James Joyce's Ulysses. It's 700+ pages and very difficult to read; I've tried it more than once and though I didn't hate it I'd often catch myself drifting away every few pages. This won't do! So in the interest of making it easier on myself, I added a collection of Joyce's short stories to my list- Dubliners. The book seems like a much better introduction to Joyce's writings, and required far less effort to get through. Plus it's his first book, and a number of the characters he introduced here show up in Ulysses. Most of the stories were pretty simple and easy to read- some of the more memorable ones being An Encounter in which some kids deal with a creepy old man; Two Gallants, a day in the life of some con-men; and Grace, where an alcoholic gets his religious groove back. But for every memorable one, there seemed to be a stinker, which left me with a very "meh" attitude to the collection as a whole. But then, this isn't supposed to be Joyce's great work, but Ulysses is. We shall see if it's worthy of the praise in due time, but probably not for a while.