text: I read this book after watching the brilliant movie version of "The Hours."  If that's your motivation, don't waste your time.  My English teachers will cringe when I say it, but this book, well, sucks. It may well be great literature, but the characters are not engaging, and if it was Woolf's motive to out-do James Joyce in chronicling a day-in-the-life and in writing a stream of conscious narrative, she doesn't pull it off.  Again, the characters and the internal mental life simply don't have the power that "Ulysses" has.  Reading Woolf is necessary for a good eduction.  I recommend, however, that you read "To the Lighthouse". I may still be motivated to read the book version of "The Hours" given how great the movie was.  But my taste for Woolf is all done now.  
  