(no subject)

The last time I wrote, I was talking all about how I had to get my act together and get back on track. Well, I've done a fairly good job of this except in one area: reading. I got bogged down in the "Oxen of the Sun" chapter of Ulysses months ago, and have yet to pick it back up. Nor have I picked up any other books. I have the feeling that I can't possibly read something else because I'm in the middle of Ulysses, but I have no real desire to force myself to wade through "Oxen of the Sun", especially since it's been so long since I've picked it up and I'm feeling pretty disconnected from the story. I was really into it for awhile, as you can tell from some of my old posts, but that feeling is definitely gone now. I know that there are good parts coming up, particularly "Ithaca" and "Penelope", but I've got to get through both "Oxen of the Sun" and the incredibly long and daunting "Circe" before I get there.

So I figure that I've got three options right now. (1) I can go back to Ulysses, pick up right where I left off and try to forge bravely ahead. (2) I can decide to skip "Oxen of the Sun" entirely, read what Harry Blamires has to say about it in The Bloomsday Book, and see if I can get through the final remaining chapters. Or (3) I can put Ulysses away entirely and go read any one of the other interesting books that are getting backed up on my list of books to read. I really want to get back to reading, but I'm having a hard time deciding which of these choices to pursue.

My trouble is that I started reading Ulysses again specifically because I hadn't read it completely the first time and I wanted to do that. For awhile I really thought that I had made a great decision. I was really enjoying it, and getting a lot out of it, and appreciating the intellectual challenge of it... But then I hit a roadblock, stopped reading for a while and lost all of that enjoyment. Theoretically, I could regain that if I sat back down with the book and started reading it again, but so far I haven't been able to make myself do that. I don't really like either choice 2 or choice 3 because they imply that I'm giving up on my goal of reading Ulysses from start to finish, but I have been unable to actually make choice 1 happen. So maybe it's time to stop being so hard on myself and realize that reading something is better than reading nothing at all. And Ulysses isn't going anywhere. If I don't get through it all this time, I can always try again in another year or so...