Standard Ebooks' 1,000th title: Ulysses

Overall reception and ebook quality

• Many commenters are enthusiastic about Standard Ebooks, calling it an important, much‑needed project.
• Both free and paid ebooks are often plagued by bad OCR, typos, and poor formatting; SE is praised for careful proofreading and high production values.
• Several people say SE has enabled them to read many classics, and some intend to support the project financially.

Readability score controversy

• The claimed “fairly easy” reading score for this title is widely ridiculed as obviously wrong.
• SE explains it uses the classic Flesch Reading Ease formula, implemented as a simple script working on word/sentence/syllable counts.
• Some argue the metric is misapplied or misleading for fiction, especially highly experimental prose; one person calls it disrespectful to rely on “unvetted” machine scoring for novices.
• Others defend it as a long‑standing, crude but useful heuristic with known limitations and rare edge cases; they’d rather have an imperfect metric than none.
• Debate arises over whether this constitutes “AI”; several people push back, noting its extreme simplicity.

Discoverability and technical stack

• Users want ways to find the most popular SE books (sort by popularity, downloads, ratings).
• Suggestions include using Gutenberg download stats or the Open Library API; some Open Library integration already exists but is incomplete.
• One commenter describes SE’s web stack as an idiosyncratic static generator in PHP, making new indices and features harder to add.

Experiences with the book and reading strategies

• Many describe the novel as extremely difficult, tedious, or unrewarding despite finishing (or attempting) it; others consider it a pinnacle of language and structure.
• Several recommend external guides, annotated sites, and lecture series, as well as alternating between the text and commentary.
• Some suggest audiobooks or radio‑style performances as more approachable; a brief argument surfaces over whether listening instead of reading is “sacrilege,” with others rejecting that as gatekeeping.
• A substantial subthread debates valuing beauty and style in language versus prioritizing clarity and “substance,” with multiple defenses of aesthetic pleasure as a core function of literature.

Textual edition choices

• SE’s edition blends early printings and errata up to a pre‑1929 boundary, aiming at a historically grounded text; probable misprints from that era are intentionally retained.
• This approach is noted as potentially contentious for textual scholars; SE clarifies that, unlike most of their catalog, this edition does not modernize typography or conventions.