What do we do?

There is a sense of dread or failure often attached to the name Ulysses- an unfinished phantom mocking you from your bookcase. It's a novel we pick up hopefully and set down dejectedly. It's long, it's obtuse, and it doesn't love you or care about you. It carries with it the stink of failure for the casually intellectual among us. Blooms & Barnacles is a project born out of the desire to prove to the other casual intellectuals out there that not only can you read and understand Ulysses, it can also be fun. Inspired by the Ulysses Support Group (a.k.a. Book Club) at Portland, Oregon's T.C. O'Leary's Irish Pub, we hope to create an entertaining companion for anyone making their way through Joyce's masterpiece.

Who are we?

Kelly, blogger and podcaster extraordinaire

Kelly is a founding member of T.C. O'Leary's Ulysses Support Group (a.k.a. Book Club). Together, the Support Group read the entirety of Ulysses out loud from Bloomsday 2017 to Bloomsday 2018. She has never really stopped reading Ulysses since then. She does not have an English degree. She has failed to be accepted to Ph.D. programs twice and decided to just write this dang blog instead. Kelly lives in the west of Ireland with her husband Dermot.

Dermot, animator and teacher of design

Dermot is the titular ‘angry animator’ of his animation blog. He provides cartoons and sketches for the blog and is the Barnacle to Kelly’s Bloom. He has never read Ulysses but has enjoyed reading passages from it on occasion. He is currently attempting to dissuade Kelly from reading Finnegans Wake.