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Ulysses is a really awesome experience, but Joyce assumes that you know everything someone living in Dublin in 1904 would have known, from the name of the drug store down the street to the political scandals of the time and everything in between. Since you don't, you need something like Gifford's Annotations to fill in the gaps. Gifford makes Ulysses a thrill rather than a chore.
This is such an incredibly reductive view of criticism. I would agree that sometime reviewers can get carried away, and the quality of reviews can be debated, but critical thinking is essential and at the core of all digestion of art. Would highly recommend you check out this book by A.O. Scott which goes into this in way more depth. Plenty of artists are critics themselves as well.
There's definitely a debate on whether or not scores are problematic, but I'd say it's more that people don't fundamentally appreciate what a score in criticism aims to convey, rather than the score itself.
You will not be disappointed. If you can get your hands on one of these it has proved invaluable. My copy is a first edition which is epic but later editions have more info.
And listen to several of these podcasts to get you in the mindset. http://www.frankdelaney.com/
Delaney is reading the entire book over ~20 years giving every reference he can. And he helped me understand the Joyce flow. Get back to me in 6 months when you get to the Oxen of the Sun.
There are entire books and websites dedicated to Ulysses. I gave it a go over the summer and found it basically unreadable until I got a companion book to go with it.
A few people out there think it's the greatest thing ever written. By all means, give it a try, but I'd spend a little time doing some research before you dive in.
For instance, this website suggests reading other things (or at least being familiar with them) before even beginning Ulysses. I found the whole thing to be quite daunting. I picked up Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man and found it more enjoyable. I haven't made it back to Ulysses yet.
This book is the companion I got. Note that it's not Ulysses - it's only the annotations that go with it. Paired together, it's interesting, but quite tedious.
Good luck, and happy reading!
The benefit of writing reviews on your own is that it'll expose you to readers from whose feedback you may be able to synthesize improvements.
The drawback is that social feedback is not a reasonable substitute for a good, experienced editor to guide you on questions of import particular to the task of film criticism (or any other specialty within journalism).
If you're in school, get involved with the school paper. If you're not, get involved with a small publication that takes open submissions but also has solid editorial guidance. These things will expose you to the whole process. You don't have to love film, but you have to love this process in order to succeed as a writer.
Immerse yourself in culture. Live life. Nothing great is written in a bubble. World experience informs your viewpoint. The most interesting critics to read are the ones who can contextualize film for the majority who do a variety of things with their time. The point of film criticism is not to tell the reader what to think of a particular movie, but to broaden how they think about cinema and, by extension, culture.
Continue reading professional critics. A good place to start might be A.O. Scott's book, <em>Better Living Through Criticism</em>.
And if you do, let me know so I can tell A.O. he owes me a dollar. (inside joke).
****
Footnote: Yes, I'm a professional critic. No, I do not watch that cartoon...
If you're reading Checkhov, I highly recommend a book called "40 stories." It's a book of short stories, but they're in chronological order from when they were written, so you can really see his development as a writer. The earlier ones are shorter and simpler, but by the end you can tell he's just become a master of his craft.
An Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry
Reading myself to sleep beats browsing Reddit and is super peaceful.
Next I want to start Spain in Our Hearts by Adam Hochschild.
And I'm listening to the new Chris Hedges book Unspeakable on audiobook.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Avant-Garde-Making-School-Poets/dp/0385495331/
https://www.amazon.com/City-Poet-Times-Frank-OHara/dp/0062303414
Those are my favorite two by far. I have more recommendations if you want them.
Check out the book, Repression and Recovery by Cary Nelson. He has whole sections about repressed marxist poets.
Also, super surprised no one has mentioned Muriel Rukeyser since she was a political activist and feminist.
Also check out someone like Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Cry of the Children).
There is a lot of good stuff out there, and Nelson's book could lead you there!
There are lots of good short story collections of Latin American writing, these may be good because he's more likely to find something he likes/discover new writers? e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Book-Latin-American-Stories/dp/067977551X/
> Ohh ok! I was talking about the writings themselves.
If anything else, I think philosophy trying to subsume poetry is very bad for poetry, and Wallace Stevens said something very similar. The most extreme example I can think of recently is a philosopher who claims his philosophy is poetically based getting intemperately angry at poets for not being sufficiently philosophical for his tastes.
Likewise there are times where poetry has learned a lot from philosophy like Dante, but I think it's pretty dishonest to call the Divine Comedy itself "philosophy," even if philosophical points are made in it.
> One of my main issue with philosophy is the time spent talking about previous philosophers' work and arguing about what the meaning of them.
But part of that is what the discipline is about. If you find yourself not just disagreeing, but being entirely disinterested in the work of other, especially historical philosophers, you may as well have walked yourself into a rather bad path indeed. The same way as if you find your scientific theory is at odds with everyone and everyone's evidence, it's probably simply your own fault.
You might like Schopenhauer. He is very nimble about references to previous philosophers, and drawing his investigations from real experience rather than simply books.
Her kan du få den for knap en halvtredser inklusiv fragt: http://www.play.com/Books/Books/4-/455531/Ulysses/Product.html?searchstring=ulysses&searchsource=2&searchfilters=s{ulysses}%2bc{91}%2b&urlrefer=search
Hvis du vil nærlæse den, kan jeg anbefale dig at have denne guide liggende ved siden af: http://www.amazon.com/Ulysses-Annotated-Notes-James-Joyces/dp/0520253973 Men som du selv siger er det nok en del sjovere bare at læse igennem den som førstegangslæser. Jeg læste den selv sammen med en læsegruppe første gang, hvor vi nærlæste den nærmest på enkeltsætningsniveau. Det var fedt, men jeg ville næsten ønske jeg bare havde bøffet den igennem selv først.
Jeg overvejer selv at læse Karsten Sand Iversens nye oversættelse.
Du nævner selv du læser den med en underviser - hvad læser du? Engelsk? Litteraturvidenskab? Det er forhåbentlig ikke en gymnasielærer der har sat den på programmet :)
One of my all-time favorite books. Hopefully you will be reading this translation: http://www.amazon.com/The-Master-Margarita-Mikhail-Bulgakov/dp/0679760806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1347058072&sr=8-1&keywords=master+and+margarita
It's one of my favorite books. Great satire. The Burgin-O'Connor translation is my favorite.
It helps to have knowledge of Soviet Russia (so you get the "Hand over your foreign currency" jokes, and the reasons why the characters can't admit to the supernatural occurrences they witness), but if you finished high school and you remember the fall of the Berlin Wall & dissolution of the USSR you are probably good to go.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov.
Man vs. Satan, as imagined by a politically repressed, famous Russian author in the late 1920's. He also wrote "Heart of a Dog" and "The Fatal Eggs" among a few other great books.
This book is a trip. One minor turn-off might be the amount of references to Russian culture and places, but it's not absolutely required to know anything about them. I read this book probably half a dozen times in Russian, and once in English, to see how well it was translated... BTW, there are several translations, and not all were created equal.