YOU MAY NOT understand it by the end, but Trinity College has reminded readers that just 10–15 pages a day will be enough to finish James Joyce’s classic novel before the summer’s out.
Mark Twain observed that a “classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read”.
This quote is often applied to Joyce’s Ulysses, which chronicles the experiences of three Dubliners over the course of a single day, 16 June 1904 to be exact.
With Bloomsday in sight, Trinity College Dublin is inviting readers to tackle the modernist novel one day at a time.
It noted that just 10–15 pages a day, from 1 June to 19 August, will see readers finish Joyce’s Ulysses.
The project is led by Cliona O’Farrelly, a scientist at Trinity College Dublin who has read Ulysses 24 times and said even she “still doesn’t understand it”.
It’s also led by her friend Mark Sanford Gross, who is based in California and has never been to Ireland, but says he “gets” the characters of both Stephen Dedulus and Leopold Bloom “in his soul”.
This is the fifth summer in a row that the Ulysses in 80 Book Club is inviting readers from all over the world to tackle the famous tome.
It’s also the first time the book club events will take place in the US.
Two series of in-person gatherings will accompany the 2026 reading of Ulysses in 80 Days; one in Dublin’s Docklands at Trinity College Dublin’s community engagement space at Unit18 and the other in California.
“I’m not going to pretend Ulysses is an easy read but it is such a huge, fantastic book,” said O’Farrelly.
She said it’s “packed with dozens of events and characters, thoughts, songs and jokes all lurching from the maudlin to the inspired to the puzzling all around Dublin city”.
“There is something for everyone, even if they don’t read the 10–15 pages every day.”
Meanwhile, Trinity School of English associate professor Sam Slote, who is involved with Ulysses in 80, remarked that “’getting’ Ulysses is perhaps not even the real point of the book since it’s meant to be read and enjoyed”.
“Sometimes not understanding something, such as missing a reference or a nuance in a turn of phrase, is actually part of the point – and I’m saying this as someone who has spent many, many years annotating the book.”
The online book club can be found at Ulyssesin80.com, where the first and last few words and page numbers for each day’s readings will be posted daily.
The relevant page numbers of several printed editions will be provided.
And the organisers have said listening to Ulysses is sometimes better than reading it, the relevant time stamps for the RTÉ podcasts of Ulysses will be posted daily.
Readers are also invited to contribute their thoughts, comments and insights about the day’s section online.
Further information on the in-person events at Unit18 can be found here.