I haven't (read Ulysses) so hopefully I am not hijacking the conversation, but your comment on why, beyond pure entertainment prompted me. I rarely get the chan

I haven't (read Ulysses) so hopefully I am not hijacking the conversation, but your comment on why, beyond pure entertainment prompted me. I rarely get the chance to trot out one of my favorite Twain quotes, but now is the time: The classics are the books which everyone wants to have read but no one wants to read. In my experience a big part of "the classics" seem to be using them as some kind of gamer achievement to prove your erudition. An argument can be made for them leading to a wider world view or exposure to thought provoking/timeless concepts, but I don't think enough people truly read them at that depth/for that reason. I like to read and have a reasonably broad library, but I find it tiresome to discuss literature with a lot of people as I don't have a formal education in the space and most people that want to chat about it snicker if you say you first encountered Boethius in A Confederacy of Dunces or that you prefer Candide to The Metamorphosis or you like One, No One and One Hundred Thousand over, say, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.