Amazon.com Reviews of Ulysses

Inspired by this amusing article at The Morning News, I checked out some of the real-life, one-star reader reviews of Ulysses posted at Amazon.com.

As you might imagine, reviews ranged from the hilarious to the surprisingly thoughtful to the downright weird. And of course, a generous measure of the just plain awful. Here are some of my favorites:


"I could never pray the Lord's Prayer and read this book."

"The poor trees who gave their lives that _Ulysses_ might gather dust on countless shelves would have been put to nobler use as toothpicks."

"This is one of those books that "smart" people like to "read." Well if being smart means liking this, count me out! I don't know if it's modern, post-modern or what: but I know this much, I'd rather just curl up with "Bridges of Madison County" for a good cry! . . . I'd like to have seen Leopold patch things up with Molly, am I right? I mean, let's get down to brass tacks: don't we all hate those intellectuals who consider this one of the century's 'finest works of literary craft'? I mean these are the people who put "Citizen Kane" in the top ten...and totally ignored "Life as a House"! (No offense, but Orson Welles is no Kevin Kline!) Unless Oprah puts it on her book list, I won't be picking this one up again, that's for sure."

"This waste of paper is a genuine TEE-YOU-ARE-DEE"

"uggghhhh, after nine months i finally finished this rambling, incoherent string of words. i took this book on because i'm reading the 100 best books of the 20th century (as defined by the modern library). . . . whoever listed this as number 1 was smoking too much crack - since i can't afford a nine-month crack habit, i guess i'll never be able to truly appreciate it."

"There is a famous sex scene in this book where the mental thoughts of the individual coming to climax fills many pages. I asked around and no one I know thinks about anything while climaxing except for a sexual fantasy. Totally unrealistic."


(I'm still marveling that someone would "ask around" about people's thoughts while having sex, all in service of writing a book review on Amazon!)