Love the idea of a Tunnel Club, am presuming that the male-only rule is lifted
Having read Ulysses, and I say "read" rather than "absorbed" or "understood" (I only finished it because my mother bet me £5 I wouldn't, and I was at that time an impoverished student), also living in a place that gets swamped every Bloomsday as I'm less than 1/2 mile from the Martello tower of the opening sequence, and that place being in Dublin - I'm sick to the back teeth of the thing. Personal anti-Ulysses bias, declared. (1)
I'd love to read 2666, but am in agreement that some sort of palate cleanser is probably in order (am reading a Jim Butcher next, following up with Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, because as a bookseller it is a point of shame to me that I have thus far only read a single book off this year's Man Booker list).
To be honest, I'll read anything the Tunnel Club decides on. Even the dreaded Joyce (again). Reading IJ this time 'round, in this company, was far more fulfilling (for me) than back in '97, when I knew that I loved it, but didn't entirely "get" it.
(1) Interesting story - I studied English and Linguistics at UCD, where there was a bit of verbal sparring on a yearly basis, between two lecturers at odds on the worth of Joyce butting into one another's lectures. All I really took away from the sparring was an assertion by one of them that w/r/t Finnegans Wake (sic) "Life's too short". To further confirm this, there was a discussion group in a hotel across the road where people would try to eke meaning(s) from the book (FW), sometimes a word at a time. In 1991, they had been doing same for a decade. I sometimes wonder if they're still there.
) I might stick around.