Which is more challenging to read: Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake?

Okay, I voted for Finnegan's Wake. Heard that be some heavy shit.

Finnegan it is!

I haven't finished either book, but while Ulysses is difficult to
read, Finnegans Wake is IMPOSSIBLE to read. I believe I
started a poll somewhere on IMWAN about FW...

Why, for the love of God WHY????

I took an entire semester's college course each on Ulysses and Finnegans [no apostrophe] Wake. I've read Ulysses all the way through about 3x and Finnegans Wake once. FW can be interpreted in many different ways, but it has a lot to give back if you're patient enough [VERY difficult]. You can't read it like a regular book, you have to pay more attention to process than content a lot of the time. Sometimes you just have to follow the cadence and listen to the way the words sound. By the way I like Lou Reed's Metal Music Machine.

There should be an "I decided life is too short for James Joyce" option.

Yes, but if you can work your way through one of these books, you get to brag about it! A badge of honor, like having actually read all of "War and Peace".

I did actually read one novel by Uncle James that I found very enjoyable, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young man". Made me very conscious of absurdity in my formative years in high school. My high school friend and I used to joke about absurdity all the time.

Haven't read War and Peace, but I have read Crime and Punishment without being ordered to. Ought to be worth something!

We had to read that in high school, but I don't think I ever finished it. Saw the movie, though, with Peter Lorre, but for some strange reason I forget who directed it; I'm normally very good at remembering directors.

I haven't read War and Peace either, and I fell asleep during the King Vidor movie when it was shown on TV!

I've got a Japanese manga of Crime and Punishment by the great Osamu Tezuka. It was published in English in Japan in the early '90s, I think, and must be rare now.

I've also got a "Joycentennial" poster of James Joyce, which I got when the Irish celebrated his 100th birthday.

I've got the definitive, unabridged, unexpurgated, annotated Penguin Ulysses, but I'm not sure if I've got Finnegan's Wake.

But I've only read bits of Ulysses.

Dostoevsky as manga? That's scary!

Well it's drawn in Tezuka's familiar cute manga style, which you may know from Astro Boy or Kimba the White Lion. Nothing to be afraid of!

I got through Ulysses with great effort and some enjoyment. I can even imagine attempting Finegans Wake.

Congratulations, Pip! You can now wear the T-shirt, "I got through Ulysses".

Reading Joyce is almost the epitome to me of what literature should not be - i.e. hard work. I admire his achievement (and really only because other people with greater eminence than me have told me I should) but he leaves me cold.