Rating: 
Summary: Too much... just too much.
Review: This book is full of made-up language, words as long as your arm and an almost incomprehensible grammatical structure. I tried to read it three times and gave up. Since I don't have to do it for college, I'll let others imagine they can understand it and tell you how fabulous it is. For me, it is too difficult to understand--like the ravings of a lunatic. If it has a message, I don't see it, and no-one whose review I have read of this book has ever convinced me that they have understood it any better. It's apparently a grand book for the literary elite to parade in front of the rest of us while puffing out their chests and patting each other on the back, boosting their own conceit. I think it a massive prank by Joyce. One which has taken many in and will no doubt continue to do so for time immemorial. To listen to people state how fabulous this book is and how monumental it is for them and then have nothing whatever to tell about what they actually got from it is nauseating. I think Joyce must be chuckling in his grave at these literary lightweights pronouncing this prankish experimental book a perennial classic.
Rating: 
Summary: riverrun...the
Review: The greatest literary work of the 20th century. Period
Rating:
Summary: O foenix culprit!
Review: "You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy?" (FW p.112). Here we have the ultimate in desert island choices! It is the Ring cycle and the Sistine Chapel of literature. Though not one of the longest books ever written (at 628 pages), it is undoubtably the deepest. I am only a teenager, but I think my limited grasp on this veritable tome has led to a more complete understanding of this zany world. Look for anything in this book and you will find it. It reflects the entirety of human history, but is only as esoteric as you want it to be!
Do not be afraid! It was far more of an undertaking to write this than it can ever be to read it - remember poor, bespeckled, blind old Joyce slaving away on his unrecognized magnum opus. Just try it, and laugh your heart out.
Rating:
Summary: The Work of a Hundred Geniuses
Review: There is no way to capture Finnegans Wake within a few short paragraphs, and so I will refrain from the attempt. Instead, I will simply let you know that this is the one book that any serious scholar of "English" literature needs to reckon with.
It is not an easy work. It is, however, immensely enjoyable once a few of the games are understood.
There are levels within levels of depths to this work. . . but the reader can get a surface understanding of the work by simply reading it aloud.
Read aloud, the score of the work comes alive. The cadences and colorful language (and humor) can be appreciated on this level.
Now re-read the work, only this time pay attention to the awkward spelling. There is a level of meaning here too -- which can be added to the surface level to gain a bigger picture.
It is not unlike Life in this regard.
Each time we re-return (to the Wake OR to Life) we gain a deeper understanding (of both).
Finnegans Wake is the Akashic Record, the Collective Unconscious, the subaqueous portion of the iceberg. . . and it speaks to every one of us.
If the beginning is too difficult a place to start. . . plunge in anywhere. The book has no discreet beginning or end, and, in fact, reconnects with itself like the proverbial serpent that eats its own tail.
Also, don't hesitate to consult the many great works that aim at aiding the reader through this vehement behemoth. The works by Joseph Campbell, Anthony Burgess and Stuart Gilbert are among the best.
After reading but a few chapters of Finnegans Wake you will receive this benefit: Everything else you read will be a piece of cake!
This tour de force is thunderously good. . . or as Joyce would say:
"Bababadalgharaghtakamminnarronkonnbronntonneronntuonthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoordenenthurnuk!"
Dave Beckwith
Founder/President
Charlotte Internet Society
Rating:
Summary: Not for the faint of heart . . .
Review: Gentle readers, beware! Finnegan's Wake is the most difficult book I have ever tried to read. Joyce's play with language, plot, and myth make for one of the most difficult readings in the history of literature. On the other hand, I can say (honestly) that the last ten pages of this book are my favorite in all the world of books. After the twentieth reading, or so, they began to make enough sense to my feeble brain for me to fall in love with this truly spectucular work of language.
Rating:
Summary: the novel that wasn't
Review: Hep the noodle went the proprietor, laugh, crafting laughing, spinning face on touchtop of oats and wheat in the grange. But for the crosshatch eyebrow, then sanctify, in barrels, who glossface knows no nose. Whepped, whipped, on a turnip stitch, when she smiled and flung her hair back, wet; drip; drip; drip, and a breeze cool and encumbered with hopefake. The stigmata of her hands, blood drain. If he takes her by the hair hair hair, stands - doesn't the cistern fill with wet, circumspect? - and he sets aloft the dregs of her, to douse with cleanse, polyandry from the morn and the eve. And doesn't this fit the swellick twofold or more? It is felicitous to devour julienne upon petit four, more, and he told her with pettifoggery to her cool laughter. Not eat; twain, grelch, grolsh. Into the phaeton, all singsong, all along, wretches and fables, choking on guilt and profane, and she was away. Back to hideabinds he skulks. Over.
Rating: 
Summary: Well I Finished It
Review:
Took me almost three years but I did it. Read every word (I think they were words). Much like running a marathon a lot pain was involved along the way. However, like a marathon that pain was replaced by that tremendous sense of relief and accomplishment when it was over. The end of the novel became my quest, my obsession - just like Ahab's white whale.
Can't tell you what Finnegans Wake was about because I can't even pretend that I understood it. For me, Finnegans Wake was more of a one-of-a-kind experience than it was a traditional read. Most of the time I kept thinking "what kind of a mind creates this style, this language, this alternate reality?" There were times that I thought I almost grasp something but that something quickly evaporated much like a phantom or a hallucination. Though I didn't understand it I can't say that Finnegans Wake is without merit. It has endured too long and has sparked too much debate to be rendered insignificant. Frankly, I enjoy reading the wildly diverse opinions/analysis/commentaries on Amazon.com more than I did the book. And that is why I gave Finnegans Wake a 4-star rating.
Rating:
Summary: Nice story
Review: You will probably consider this novel to be difficult. I agree with anybody who thinks so. It is very difficult. It certainly is hard to grasp, but once you get into it, that is it. James Joyce stretched the language and brought the book to a far higher form of writing that is uncommon around. Uncommon in the sense that you have to get into it to love it. For easier, compelling reads, I recommend the works of Janvier Tisi. Also recommended: Disciples of Fortune, Parsifial Mosaic
Rating: 
Summary: addiction hyphen
Review: wkrc wcpo..
boo... blink
clinton springs and US42
assasination attempt on sweetheart?
513-421-6872
513-763-5422
202-762-1400
travelers in clear channel accident reports to yahoo road maps
seemingly an encroaching steering committee..
will you personalize, cc, the computer you are looking in at the
time
extortionists sitting on the breath of humans
interdimensional travelers...
a tow motor man running your lines throught the pentagon allis chalmers orange Lucent peterson afb matrix
the helicipter is waiting for relatives of doug and melissa of course
interdimensional travelers must remember the lies as they
dressed themselves in the mirror
mona?
mona?
addiction hyphen
shunned high fun
interdimensional travelers deposit the lies of electronic
condensers in a place reserved by the whistleblower
the telephony is transcendent and pure becoming
like the tale from the white hart
the condenser is forged
when will it light back krc, cpo... enquirer
mechanics and doctors are masking the daedalus trek for you
make light of something that is not hypen
drive your lie till yahoo gleams in your telephonic reverie of
final egress the whistleblower will call you
dreaming antennas in the solar plexus..
the hyena perched on the chest krc.. cpo
with enough gratis interns from the university
the cladding you seek, like zirconium jewelry
interdimensional travelers marking time on mirror like
through a looking glass
on the other side of the looking glass the whistle blower
will pack the condenser tighter
waiting... waiting for personal lie, a missed trip
the jamb nail is in the medicine vial but you cannot find
the egress without retrieving the amber plastic
nu?
clear channel arson radio
toggle grid *N (ON)
boo
Rating:
Summary: The Emperor has no clothes!
Review: I am convinced that people do not read Finnegans Wake, or at least not in the same sense that we ever normally use the word "read." FW is 600+ pages long and I've yet to find more than a handful of standard English sentences among them. In 1999 (this is 2005) I started to read the Wake, with the best of intentions, but I soon noticed a problem. A few paragraphs in, my mind would start to wander, for there was nothing solid that my mind could hang on to. I encountered no setting, no characters, no plot, no narration, nothing concrete nor conceptual. The best that I could say was that every once in a while, some group of words would be evocative of an image or memory, but even when this would happen I could not say for certain whether it was intentional on the part of the author or accident. Eventually, I started reading it aloud in order to keep myself "in" the book but, no help. Today, I am 100 pages in; I can't really bear to read more than a page at a time, and even this is an effort. I get as close to 'zero' from reading it as I can imagine.
Now, please understand that I am not a stupid man, nor unaccustomed to difficult literature. I've a college degree and, in fact, currently teach 10th grade English. I've read (and understood), among other things, Shakespeare, The Bible, War and Peace, and also Ulysses. It is sometimes said that this book was written "for the intelligensia"... well... I consider myself part of the intelligensia and this book was not written for me. I am not here trying to argue that the book was written as a joke, or has no actual meaning (though I think those arguments have some merit, when one considers the work) but that a person who picks this up and starts running their eyes over any given page will not be engaging in the same activity as they would when reading a book. The Wake might be closer to some sort of giant puzzle, though I doubt this as well, but a prospective reader should ask himself whether he wants to engage in a 600 page rebus. Further, I doubt that the Wake could have been "written" in the same sense that other books are. Am I to imagine that Joyce had a firm intention in mind that guided his decisions in writing this book? That he, say, edited it? Rearranged sentences for impact? Checked for consistency? Is this book translated into other languages? How could it be? And wouldn't that assume that it had been written in some language to begin with. And, finally, if it's not written in English (and it's not), or in any other intelligble language (and it's not), then in what sense do we have a book?
Is everything printed on paper literature?
I think not. I do not believe that the Wake was written as a book, and I do not think it possible to read it as one, and I submit the book itself as my evidence. It has occured to me that it would be fun, someday, to take some group of people who've given the Wake 5-star reviews, and then test them. Perhaps we could give them a group of five selections, with one of them a faux-passage and four of them authentic FW-Joyce, and see if they could determine the fake? Or, we could provide them with a passage and then ask for an explanation, and them compare their explanations with one another to see if there's any validity. In fact, FW could make for a great party game along the lines of Balderdash.
Yes, FW is perhaps (doubtful, though) a rebus and it could, with some imagination, provide a party game of sorts (largely revolving around mockery), but it is not a book to be read. Don't feel bad--it wasn't intended to be read. Through it all, the most interesting thing and the greatest value of the book is to watch the actions of the book's defenders. They haven't read it either, in any meaningful sense, and yet like the people in the fable they claim to see the clothing. After all, people of the highest virtue are able to see the Emperor's New Clothes, you see. And who wouldn't want to be a part of that group?
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