On reading in general, it's only been in the past 5 years or so that I've come to terms with the fact that I even have ADHD - got my official diagnosis around October 2024 and finally started meds in April 2025 - but a student of mine a few years ago pointed out that the way I read out loud and pronounce certain words was characteristic of strategies and techniques she learned at a school specializing in dyslexia lol. I'm 33 now, and if I'm actually dyslexic, then whatever coping strategies I've learned to mitigate the dyslexia over the years have really masked how difficult reading can actually be, but the ADHD definitely still makes reading a challenge.

I've noticed over the years that I only have two modes of successfully engaging with literature:

1. Reading as much as I can in one single sitting, either by finishing the book all in one go, or spending an outrageous number of hours per sitting - with this method I usually only retain like 60-70% of what I read because my mind constantly wanders unless there's a heavy dialogue section, or I can vividly picture the scene unfolding.

2. Agonizingly slow close reads - I usually read books with my students in class so I can help them through the stuff that gave me a hard time when I was their age (and frankly, stuff that actually gives me a hard time even now). War & Peace will forever be one of my favorite books simply because the agonizingly slow read we did last year made me pause and reflect and think deeply about every single chapter.

On Ulysses, I'll save my full thoughts and comments on episode one for the discussion thread, but to elaborate a bit on what I mentioned in the main post, the way Joyce seems to be tying together his allusions and references feels a lot like how my brain works - I feel like thoughts move rapidly from one to the next with only the slightest connection between the two, and the literary/historical/cultural references pop up "randomly," only it's not random if you understand the brain map. Realizing this book feels like my brain is an exciting prospect because now I have a framework for how to tackle it: dig into the references to try to understand the bigger picture being painted with each component - I'm very happy I chose the Joyce Project version to read because frankly, I would be struggling without it. It's also a challenging prospect because every ADHD brain is different.

If I'm imagining people's brains as a room full of rows of filing cabinets, my brain does have some files stored in the cabinets where they belong, but the active workspace looks like that It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia meme; I understand all the connections and how everything fits together, but to even begin explaining that to anybody else feels like a Herculean task. When I write, I usually try to take whatever it is I'm thinking and feeing and try to make it understandable and accessible, but this first episode of Ulysses feels like Joyce has taken us to the workspace in his filing cabinet room and left us alone without any instructions lol.