A review by tumblyhome_caroline
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham

5.0

This book is Bloomin’ BRILLIANT. I was glued to it.

It is just an excellent biography of a book from conception to ongoing and eternal life. Honestly, the book discussed within this book itself ended up with a character and it walked through the pages bold as brass.

It also is a fascinating examination of the creative process. I always enjoy hearing about how artists (in all mediums) work, think and create. This book excels at showing that. I absolutely loved hearing how this process was such a painful journey for Joyce and truly took his whole soul to write. I think the sort of writer who worked as Joyce did is a very rare and incredible genius.

The whole subject of censorship, banning books, burning books was both terrible and thought provoking. It will give me so much to think about. I just read Plato’s Republic and the subject is discussed in that.so reading this fitted in nicely with that. This is a subject too big for a GoodReads review, but it is an interesting thought experiment to mull over.

The research for the book felt well done. I didn’t feel the author had an agenda other than to tell the story of the book, the author and the times…it was gripping, interesting, thought provoking and just BRILLIANT.