I read it last year over 3-4 months, I absolutely loved it. It has some of the most distinct and fully formed characters ever shown in fiction. It's also one of the funniest books I've ever read.

The last chapter or Hadji Murad by Tolstoy

You definitely can read it that way, the 2nd half of the book isn't really episodic and is amazing (as others have said in this thread).

There probably wouldn't have even been a part 2 if someone else hadn't written a terrible fake sequel that Cervantes felt compelled to expose as fake and replace in everyone's minds with a "true" sequel.

Honestly, I think Ulysses is meant to be understood lol, you just have to work a bit for it. If anything, it's the ultimate analysis and process novel, kind of a culmination of what was canonical Western literature at that point while also pointing towards something new.

Finnegans Wake is a totally different beast, tho.

Yeah it's definitely a "sad future" lol, but nothing about it is a failed utopia