Dear Great Book Guru,  I just checked my calendar and sure enough Monday is Bloomsday.  I usually celebrate with friends reading excepts of ULYSSES but this year I want to do something a little more special.  Any thoughts?  Bloomsday Celebrant

Dear Bloomsday Celebrant , I have a wonderful plan for you which will begin on the eve of Bloomsday.    As most of my readers know, Bloomsday is celebrated every year to commemorate  the day James Joyce’s ULYSSES takes place: June 16, 1904.   Joyce spent most of his adult life in exile  but he wrote obsessively about one place and one place only: his birthplace - Dublin. In ULYSSES, we follow  three main characters through the day into the night- seeing and experiencing Dublin as they did.    But ULYSSES is more than the portrait of one city on one day- it is also a study of the epic wanderings of the Greek hero Odysseus (Ulysses)- mocking the wanderings of the most unlikely of heroes: Leopold Bloom. On Sunday, June 15 at 8am, the James Joyce Society of Sea Cliff will lead a tour of Sea Cliff/Dublin stopping at parallel locations along the way. The tour will begin at the Sea Cliff Water Tower ( Martello Tower). Other places will include Still Partners ( Davey Byrne’s Pub), Headless Park (Nelson’s Pillar),  Memorial Park (Dublin Cemetery), K.C. Gallagher’s (Barney Kiernan’s Bar) and Sea Cliff Beach (Sandymount Strand). Dan and Ann DiPietro will lead the tour which will take about one hour.  In preparation you might want to read ULYSSES AND US by Declan Kieberd, FOUR DUBLINERS  by Richard Ellmann, or the recently released THE MOST DANGEROUS BOOK by Kevin Birmingham. Happy Reading and Happy Bloomsday!