I've just finished reading of #JamesJoyce’s #Ulysses, my third time doing so, and my experience of reading it has been so different on each occasion, it's as though I was reading a different book.

 I've just finished reading of #JamesJoyce’s #Ulysses, my third time doing so, and my experience of reading it has been so different on each occasion, it's as though I was reading a different book.

That's true of any great book. Always larger than just first readings.

Brothers Karamazov, Mrs Dalloway, La Bête Humain, Middlemarch, Heart of Darkness, The Metamorphosis, Death In Venice, The Turn of The Screw... Even Lolita, a much maligned book of real complexity.

I'd argue that a book that was identical on second reading as on first was probably quite shallow if not utterly tepid. There's a quality of shifting light in many great texts... even great short stories: Joyce's own The Dead, Checkov's Lady With The Little Dog, Mansfield's Bliss, Stevenson's Markheim, Gogol's The Overcoat... there are shifting tonal qualities and intelligent complexities in all.of these...