Ferrell, Joyce in same sentence

Will Ferrell has received the James Joyce award -- but concedes he’s no literary expert.

“As I perused my leather-bound volumes of ‘Ulysses,’ ‘Finnegans Wake,’ ‘Dubliners,’ ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,’ standing in my mahogany library, a lot of feelings ran across my mind. Like: ‘Damn, I should have read these books,’ ” the 40-year-old film star deadpanned in front of more than 1,000 University College Dublin students this week.

The Joyce award, run by the university’s Literary and Historical Society, has been bestowed on a wide range of politicians and celebrities, including civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, former South African President F. W. de Klerk and former United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix.