I've finished Ulysses. A masterpiece. Very difficult and at times almost unbearably frustrating, but all in all a very rewarding experience. The experiments with prose are just stunning. The influence that some of those chapters had on literature and cinema is enormous. Films just popped into my head while reading, thinking that filmmakers like Fassbinder (the epilogue to Berlin Alexanderplatz is very similar to the Circe chapter) and Linklater (Slacker is basically a rip-off of The Wandering Rocks chapter) must have read this religiously. The humour really started to work for me about one-third in since I started at that point to accustom to the style. It's a hilarious book. But in fact, behind all the irony and parody and mockery, there are some really beautifully written, poignant passages. Bloom is a fantastic character.
Everybody who is into literature should try and finish this. It is worth it.