The Reading Log

ULYSSES: A FIRST READING · DIMENSION 15 · TYPE VII, INSTRUMENT · A TOOL YOU KEEP

Dimension 11 of this project measured where one first reader of Ulysses actually struggled, from a complete dated record of one accompanied read. This is that study turned inside out: the instrument, published, so you can keep the same kind of record of your own reading.

HOW THIS WORKS

Nothing you type here leaves your device

the log

This page has no server, no account, no analytics and no network code of any kind. What you write is stored by your own browser, on this device, and read back only by this page. Nothing is transmitted. Nothing is collected. The project receives nothing — not your entries, not a count of them, not the fact that you opened this page.

That is a design decision, not a promise about our intentions: there is nowhere for the data to go. The consequence is yours to manage — clearing your browser's site data will erase your log, so use Save a copy below if you want it to outlive this browser.

What to record

the log

The prompts below come from what one real first reading actually produced — not from a theory of difficulty. Dimension 11 sorted 245 logged questions into nine kinds. Eight of them are offered here as tags.

The ninth is left out deliberately. It was dictation and transcription noise — difficulty manufactured by the recording medium, because that reader asked his questions aloud and they were transcribed as spoken. It is a fact about how that record was made, not about reading Ulysses, so it does not generalise to you. Its absence here is a decision, and this note is where it is recorded.

A session
What kind of difficulty was it?

Your log

the log

“Save a copy” writes a file to your downloads folder. It goes to your disk, not to us — this page cannot send it anywhere.

Your shape, so far

the log

Counted from your own entries, in your browser. Compare it with dimension 11's curve if you like — but one reader is one reader, which is the whole point of that document and of this one.

What this is not

the log

This is not a study, and you are not a participant. An earlier version of this dimension was framed as a growing dataset the project would gather; the author withdrew that framing along with the collection, and the log became a tool the reader keeps. The only dataset this project rests on remains its own single reading — n = 1, stated in that document's own voice.

It is also not a test. There is no completion, no streak and no score, because the finding that produced these prompts was that the most-questioned episodes were the ones that reader loved loudest and read fastest. Question density tracked engagement at least as much as struggle. A log full of entries is not a record of failing to read the book.