The novel of the week this week is probably the best I've ever read. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature. There's not very much I can say to promote the book, it's already achieved worlwide fame and in its time, a good measure of notoriety. To me, no other writer has ever described human thought in quite so much glorious detail as James Joyce. It is quite a challenging read, but definitely worth the effort, as it's beautifully written.
Ulysses describes the thoughts, encounters and appointments of Leopold Bloom, a part Jewish advertising canvasser and Stephen Dedalus, a student and in part self-portrait of the writer himself, in the course of an ordinary day, the 16th of June 1904. The book is based on Homer's Odyssey but instead of spanning ten whole years, is reduced to a single day. The book is quite unique because it changes style with every episode and also because of its independent raillery of the reader which happens despite the characters.