I am reading Declan Kiberd's Ulysses and Us. Kiberd's thesis is that Joyce intended Ulysses to be about and for the common person. Instead, it has become the province of the dilettante and academic specialist who through arcane papers wring the common wisdom from the text. He says, "The need now is for readers who will challenge the bloodless, technocratic explication of texts: amateur readers who will come up with what may appear to be naive, even innocent interpretations" (15). I agree with his idea and I think there is a core plot that is very accessible to the reader.