I had to read it many years ago as a student. I found drinking Guinness helped. Quite seriously. I don't really like Joyce, but some people love him. I'll be interested to read your comments.
I'm not sure you really would want to start reading it from anywhere tho I agree that the nature of the book is such that you can take passages from it and read them in isolation. Is that how you read it Infomaniac?
I intend to start with the second part of the last sentence, armed with commentaries by Tindall and Anthony Burgess.
The only thing I really know about this is that Muaary Gell-Mann was a fan and took the word "quark" from the line "3 quarks for Muster Mark" which is apparently in Finnigan's Wake and used it to refer to the sub-atomic particle which is where we get the name from