This past week I read James Joyce's Ulysses for the fourth time in my life. I last read it in 2001, and the 13 1/2 year gap was too long for this quintessential Modernist novel, and one of the greatest literary achievements in history. The twisting narrative techniques, the brutal depths of the stream of consciousness where the novel itself exerts its own consciousness, the richness and creativity of language to propel the well designed themes, rich in cultural, historic, religious and litereary allusions make this something much more than a reading experience.

I also read George Eliot's Middlemarch for the third time last month. It's, of course, a classic Victorian novel that is much different in style and content than Joyce's work, but a masterpiece nonetheless. In elegant prose Eliot captures not only the separations of class, but also the subtle distinctions within class.

I place both of these books as the greatest novels in the English language.