Anna Karenina is a classical novel that follows classical literary conventions. It's heavy and will give your understanding of Russian naming a workout, but it's still basically readable.
Ulysses, on the other hand, is hundreds and hundreds of pages of modernist stream of consciousness, from the point of view of many characters who don't believe in providing context, where every sentence is packed full of complicated wordplay and obscure allusions, and everything happens at a snail's pace. If the idea of reading a book where you literally can't understand half of it gives you pause, Ulysses is probably not the book for you.
For what it's worth, Joyce is commenting on Finnegans Wake, which goes 10x on everything above and is basically entirely incomprehensible.
You should add "in your opinion." Just because you couldn't understand or appreciate Ulysses, it doesn't mean that other people cannot, it takes a certain amount of education and reading of other books to be able to "get" Joyce and especially Ulysses.
Do you expect a person to fully understand C++ the first time they use it?
I read Ulysses to the end and appreciated it as the literary experiment it is. I don't intend to do it again though, and despite being quite widely read, thank you very much, I'm not going to claim I understood more than a fraction of it.
I don’t think this description of Ulysses is accurate nor perceptive. The first time I read it, I felt confused for the first 100 or so pages, and then it clicked. Once you get it, it’s crystal clear; and, in fact, you realize that it’s carefully plotted, with everything fitting together beautifully. Don’t deny yourself the pleasure of this book just because of other people’s lazy takes. If you would be more comfortable with a companion, look up Nabokov’s lecture. But ignore 99% of the other Ulysses criticism, especially anything that talks about Homer. Nabokov understood Ulysses, as he understood Kafka, the way very few other people have.
Ulysses, on the other hand, is hundreds and hundreds of pages of modernist stream of consciousness, from the point of view of many characters who don't believe in providing context, where every sentence is packed full of complicated wordplay and obscure allusions, and everything happens at a snail's pace. If the idea of reading a book where you literally can't understand half of it gives you pause, Ulysses is probably not the book for you.
For what it's worth, Joyce is commenting on Finnegans Wake, which goes 10x on everything above and is basically entirely incomprehensible.