Joyce to the world, etc. Rebecca Caldwell covers Bloomsday, the branded version. John Banville delves a little deeper into the myth (*from the New York Times):
"BLOOMSDAY (a term Joyce himself did not employ) was invented in 1954, the 50th anniversary, when the novelist Flann O'Brien and the writer and magazine editor John Ryan organized what was to be a daylong pilgrimage along the ''Ulysses'' route. Accounts of the venture are given by Ryan in his book of reminiscences, ''Remembering How We Stood'' -- renamed by Dublin wits ''Remembering How We Staggered'' -- and in ''No Laughing Matter,'' a biography of O'Brien by the poet Anthony Cronin, who was one of the pilgrims. Cronin's downbeat version of the ''structured and, in a way, humorless'' event is probably the more accurate one. The tour began at the architect Michael Scott's house beside the Martello tower in Sandycove, where the effects of the drink that Scott had laid on caused a scuffle between O'Brien and the poet Patrick Kavanagh. As might be expected, matters went downhill from there, and the pilgrimage was abandoned halfway through, when the weary Lestrygonians succumbed to inebriation and rancor at the Bailey pub in the city center."
On the subject of anti-Ulysses rants, I particularly like the "anonymous reviewer" who said the book was "enough to make a hottentot sick".

The Guardian has a roundup on the Orange Prize--Andrea Levy's Small Island walked away with the laurels. Katharine Viner, one of the judges, has a nice and much-linked-to piece on how the job charges the "langorous pleasure of reading" with a not-always-welcome intensity. I'm impressed that she survived this particular day intact:
"The second low point, I remember very clearly, was on February 9. I was way behind schedule, so took a day's holiday from work with the aim of reading three novels - one each in the morning, afternoon and evening. The first book was Anne Tyler's fabulous The Amateur Marriage, which was about mistakes and regret and which I found deeply affecting. I cried in my local cafe. The second book was Julie Myerson's Something Might Happen, a superb but cruel book about terrible things. I sobbed the entire time I was reading it. This was in a different cafe. That evening, at home, I read Stella Duffy's devastating novel about terminal cancer and death, and how it is worse to die than be left behind, and, well, I could hardly walk. The trouble with really good novels is that they make you engage, make you experience the emotions of the characters as if they were your own. It was a terrible day, and yet these remained three favourites for me throughout the judging process."