While I have perused Notes for Joyce, I can't really honestly say that I've read it. But it's a research book, not intended to be read cover to cover in one sitting, or a dozen sittings, or a year of sittings, which is likely what it would take. In any case, this is one of those Joyce books I mentioned in another review, where a danger exists that the reader might fall into the explanation and can't work their way back to the direct reading of the Joyce book in hand. Besides that, Notes for Joyce just seems to go a bit overboard, sentence by sentence, word by word, references and cross-references, pages for this edition, that edition. Most annoying is finding a reference only to be referred to another reference. Still, that's what Notes was intended to do, create reference, and it accomplishes its purpose and then some. My copy is first edition 1974, paperback, I'm not sure there was ever a hardback. And all that research by Gifford and Seidman before the Internet! I have marked the book in Goodreads as read, there being no other option. I suppose I could mark it currently reading, but that's not accurate either. And I'm not going to mark it "want to read" because I'm putting it back on a shelf. It's a bit foxed on the fore-edge, and there's a spill of something at the bottom. I'm sure I bought it used somewhere. It's not been off the shelf in a while. This is one of the benefits, for me anyway, my Goodreads project of cataloging my books, beginning with my favorite authors, that I'm pulling each book off a shelf and looking through them, spending more time on some than others, recalling to whatever extent I can if I can where I was and what I was doing when I first discovered the book in hand. In spite of my criticisms, I'm marking this 5 star for its achievement of its goals. ( )

Excellent piece of scholarly work with episode/line references for Gabler edition and page/line references for the 1961 Random House edition (which also match Vintage and Modern Library editions, I read the latter), although ML doesn't have line numbers so you have to search on the page to locate the passage. Covers just about everything and even indicates the Gabler changes.

This book is best used as an encyclopedic reference guide, I couldn't imagine reading it cover to cover, at least on a first reading of Ulysses. If I had to recommend only one guide for Ulysses, it would probably be this one, but for a first-time reader, I would also recommend [b:Ulysses Unbound: A Reader's Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses|36951220|Ulysses Unbound A Reader's Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses|Terence Killeen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1514772640s/36951220.jpg|58750580] by [a:Terence Killeen|529334|Terence Killeen|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], which is what I mostly used. My review here. ( )

once again, tricked into reading the fucking bible

Definitely well worth the money for any Ulysses fans. It straightens out all the Dublinisms that appear in the book and really shows just how much of an index the book is. If you go into this book not knowing what you're going to get after having read the title, I don't know what to say for you. The notes are by no means comprehensive, but it feels like it's going to be a while for that sort of thing to happen. Ulysses is almost a book that was made for the internet. People have made claims for second most important Joyce book next to Richard Ellmann's pre-eminent biography. I'd argue that that book is this. ( )

This is jammed pack with analysis, some useful, some just plain too much. Overall: good. ( )