Portrait of the Artist is also a good starting point It's way more approachable than Ulysses, the hard parts of it are more self-contained, and if the reader d

Portrait of the Artist is also a good starting point It's way more approachable than Ulysses, the hard parts of it are more self-contained, and if the reader decides to go on to Ulysses they'll have a good understanding of Stephen as a character Really in hindsight I think I liked Portrait more just because you don't have to do as much homework to understand it. It's somewhere in between the general appeal of Dubliners and the masturbatory, literary stuff in Ulysses