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Aug 09, 2011

Chris is currently reading it

I have attempted to read this book on two separate occasions and I couldn't get beyond 100 pages either time. I do believe that this has more to do with me than the book and I plan on making a third attempt at some point in the future.

Currently it sits on my bookshelf and sometimes (when I have a few too many beers) we have a talk.

Me: Hi.
Catch-22: Oh, hi.
Me: How are you feeling?
Catch-22: I've been better.
Me: Don't be upset. It's not you. It's me. More...

37 comments like (250 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Lori rated it:

I suffered through about 60 pages, and finally put it down. I very rarely ever leave a book unfinished.

The author narrates and introduces up to Yossarian, who does not want to fly in the war. I get that. I get the whole catch 22 senerio... You have to be insane to fly the plane. If you can get a dr to say you are insane, you wont have to fly. But in order to tell a dr that you are insane, this actually means you are sane. So you must continue to fly... which makes you insane. blah b More...

63 comments like (58 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Elizabeth rated it:

This book was utterly misrepresented to me before I read it. For some reason I'd always thought it had been published the same year as Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and was considered as representing the other fork of post World War II American literature apart from Pynchon's--this the conventional, plot-driven one catering to stupid people. Some professor or some didact must have told me that, enrroenously as it turns out, once. Catch 22 predates the Pynchon masterpeice by 15 years, and is in sty More...

7 comments like (47 people liked it)

Aug 09, 2009

Choupette rated it:

While I was reading this, I was so tempted to dock a star from my rating. Even though I was reading it for the second time, even though I knew that the second half was brilliant and amazing and fabulous, dragging myself through the oppressive wit of the first half was so superlatively difficult that at times not only did I want to remove a star, but I wanted to give up! Cue the gasps of horror.

His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government More...

14 comments like (61 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2012

Tanu rated it:

ooof exhausting story !! I will get back to it later(in 2050 perhaps).

Finally finished on 4 February 2012(not 2050 :p)

I did it! I finished it! I finished the book. And I am alive!!!

description

The review

This book is pure unadulterated madness. There is a harem of characters and all of them are crazy. And not just silly crazy; more like annoying crazy! Milo, Aarfy, Whitcomb, these characters will make you want to either shoot them, or shoot yourse More...

14 comments like (7 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Teresa rated it:

"I really do admire you a bit. You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it." - Colonel Cathcart, Catch-22

I really appreciate it when a book respects the intelligence of its readership. If a book is going to be "experimental" in any way, I love those that throw you into a world with no explanations - a literary bapt More...

1 comment like (17 people liked it)

Dec 08, 2011

Leonard rated it:

Never have I been pulled through the entire spectrum of emotion so enjoyably quite like this, with Heller ingeniously switching tones on a dime with a magicians charm. One moment I was laughing like a fool and the next I was clenching my jaw with agony at the horrors of the war; thankfully for my taste, it leaned more on the comedic/optimistic side. Reading Catch-22 was sort of like watching a brilliantly shining coin flipping through a majestic parabola in slow motion, with one side being laugh More...

4 comments like (11 people liked it)

May 30, 2008

Chad rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

2 comments like (12 people liked it)

Feb 13, 2008

Krys rated it:

Yossarian, a bombardier, is terrified that thousands of people he doesn't know are trying to kill him while he serves on the Italian front. It is also about those that victimize for the sake of power and status and those that are victimized. The book begins en medias res in the hospital with Yossarian and his cohorts, all healthy soldiers feigning sickness in order to avoid more military action. The book follows their hapless missions as they are used by Colonel Peckham in order to improve his c More...

0 comments like (11 people liked it)

Mar 17, 2008

jill rated it:

Absurdist plays are one act for a reason.

Seriously, I know there were points to make about the repetitive ridiculousness of bureaucracy/war/capitalism/life, but over 450 pages of variations on the Catch-22 joke?

I did find myself more affected than I would have guessed by some of the deaths, and some of the lines were clearly awesome.

Underlined bits:
In a world in which success was the only virtue, he had resigned himself to failure.(277, about the Ch More...

0 comments like (13 people liked it)

Jul 22, 2008

Jennifer rated it:

The following is an example of how many conversations in this book took place.

Jen: I didn't like this book.
Nigel: Why didn't you like the book?
Jen: I did like the book.
Nigel: You just said you didn't like the book.
Jen: No I didn't.
Nigel: You're lying.
Jen: I don't believe in lying.
Nigel: So you never lie?
Jen: Oh yes, I lie all the time.
Nigel: You just said you don't believe in it.
Jen: I don't believe in it, Jen said as More...

3 comments like (38 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Juliet rated it:

Maybe there's a reason this book is usually required high school reading; it reads like it was written by a 17-year old. Someone who clearly finds himself to be hilarious, and no one ever had the heart to tell him differently.

I never felt for any of the characters, I never laughed, I never cried. In fact, half way through the book I couldn't take it anymore, so I skipped ahead to the last chapter and yet it still made sense. I'm sorry, but if nothing happens in the second half of a b More...

8 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 11, 2011

Igor rated it:

Уловка-22 Джозефа Хеллера это книга о нормальном, здоровом эгоисте по имени Йоссариан. Попав на войну в Европу Йоссариан хочет свалить домой, потому что не понимает что он делает на этой войне. Это не его война.

Выражение Уловка-22 стало нарицательным для парадоксальной ситуации из которой есть два выхода: плохой и очень плохой, т.е. выхода нет ваще. Тупик!

Книгу Уловка-22 я считаю одной из лучших и отнес ее к категории the best and must read.

Когда я читал книг More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2009

Zinta rated it:

For so many of us growing up in the USA, our high school teachers assigned us Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" as required reading, and I was among those assignees. I'm not sure why the requirement, other than perhaps some Catch-22 type of logic that everyone else was assigning it, so there, must be great, must read. I don't particularly remember liking the novel then, perhaps with no more substantial of a reason than -- just not my style. Reading the novel now, in midlife, my opinion (or my More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 11, 2011

Charity rated it:

Catch-22...a book so influential that even it's title has been engraved in our lexicon. I just had to read it!

Welcome to Heller's version of World War II...
Yossarian, a B-25 bombardier flying missions out of a very unusual base in Italy, wants the doctor to ground him for insanity. But the very fact that he doesn't want to fly proves that he's sane. That's Catch-22. Basically, you are between a rock and a hard place...you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't...you More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Kalilah rated it:

This was a challenging read. I must have picked it out 7 or 8 times with the intention of getting through it only to put it down in favor of something else 80 or 100 pages in. That said it's actually one of the must satisfying reads I've ever had. Heller's whimsy with regard to the behavior of his characters and his style was initially very frustrating. But as I read on I began to recognize that these unpredictable and irrational elements mirrored the situations the much beloved Yossarian and hi More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Dhiraj rated it:

An extremely profound book which most people dismiss as a humorous book.Catch 22 is an intense black comedy which gives you an insight into what people do when faced with imminent danger/death. All the characters are unique in their own ways and yet you can relate to them in some way or the other. Major Major is a hated guy only because he is a non-conformist, which encompasses being good to people, being polite, honourable and being a devout Christian. The book brings about quite lucidly the ea More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 30, 2011

mark rated it:

milo you're not the boss of me, you can't tell me what to do! i am going to continue fighting, masturbating, and eventually becoming a statistic!

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 18, 2012

Rick rated it:

Despite my four years as an undergraduate student reading everything in the canon of American Literature for my college classes, I never read this book. I figured that finally, as I'm about to turn 40, I should read this seminal American novel. I'm glad I did. And, as someone who enjoys etymology, I thought it was about time I delved into the source of this oft-used phrase without just reading a Wikipedia entry or synopsis from the appropriate volume of Gale's 20th Century Literary Criticism. More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 19, 2011

chucklesthescot rated it:

Worst book I've ever had the misfortune to pick up. My dad warned me that this book was lower on the evolution scale than a wet turd, but I thought I'd try it anyway. I hated this with every fibre in my body and with any luck the book will just crawl away and die.

The characters were obnoxious, moronic gits who I hoped would all die at the hands of Jason Vorhees very soon and there was no way I'd ever connect with that idiot who was meant to be our beloved hero. The dialogue was inco More...

4 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 19, 2009

Eric_W rated it:

I read this years ago, and a paragraph in The Cat from Hue: A Vietnam War Story that I'm currently reading reminded me of it. Lawrence is on leave in Hong Kong from covering the Vietnam War and he revels in the clean sheets, three meals a day, showers, and no shelling. He has nothing in his room but a copy of Catch-22. Lawrence muses on the remarkable book as it pertains to courage. It's the end of the war, the outcome has been determined. Yossarian still must fly missions and his chances of More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2008

Kelly rated it:

My relationship with this book was somewhat quixotic. The first few chapters made me smile- in a bitter, ironic, wise-at-life sort of way of course. I loved the cleverness and deceptive punch-you-in-the-side way that Heller made his points, wrapped up in the whirling, hilariously awful world that he's created in depicting a tired, worn out unit towards the end of WWII in Italy. The choice of the main character in the bombardier Yossarian, a man who saw one too many horrors, is perfect. His quest More...

12 comments like (12 people liked it)

Sep 17, 2007

Seth rated it:

1 star. Couldn't finish it.

Clearly I'm in the minority here, so the problem may well lie with me. I grew up watching MASH; I saw Stripes and Sgt Benjamin in the theatres. National Lampoon and John Hughes gave me my childhood heroes.

Yossarian just comes across as a stuck-up whiner and I couldn't find anything funny in the first hundred pages. All the humor has been done later, better, and clearly-derivitively by other humorists. Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Altman, Alan Al More...

4 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 07, 2011

Rusty rated it:

I would like to begin by saying that I have nothing against senile drunks with ADHD (I assume Heller was all of these things, because otherwise I don't know how he could write this thing). I would simply rather not read their books. I mean what the hell is this? He jumps back and forth in time without warning or provocation. He talks in circles and recycles jokes and ineffective devices. He communicates in 450 pages what others communicate on a bumper sticker. "War is bad and only cra More...

8 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jun 19, 2008

Alan rated it:

This might be one of the more original American Novels ever written were it not utterly derivative of one of the more original French novels ever written: Journey to the End of the Night (Celine).

Still it is really funny. But most American young people have the same experience of this Novel as they have of Coldplay. They experience it when they are teenagers and don't come across the thing that engendered it (Jeff Buckley) until later. The former is affecting and competent, the later More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 06, 2010

Tyler rated it:

A word of warning - the following has more to do with my life than it has to do with the novel Catch-22. If you don't give a fig about me then just skip this.

As I mentioned in my note about War with the Newts, 1985 was the worst year of my life. I was a deeply depressed eighteen year old. My parents tried their best to help me. For my mom this meant finding me the best counselling possible, and for my dad this meant showing me that the world itself was crazy and I was quite right to More...

2 comments like (12 people liked it)

Mar 26, 2008

Michael rated it:

After re-reading this book I really understood why it had struck me as being so amazing the first time. The mixture laugh out loud, silly slapstick humor and gut-wrenching tragedy gives the novel a unique place in literature.

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Feb 26, 2009

Adrienne rated it:

I can’t say how much I hate this book. I definitely acknowledge its cultural and literary significance, which is why it gets two stars instead of one. I appreciate that Heller is a bit of a genius for the way his mind works and the style of his writing. It’s quite unique and even impressive. I value the themes in this book. I, too, think war is insane. I appreciate the realism of this book and especially that juxtaposed with the comedy. BUT reading this book feels like reading a very repe More...

11 comments like (4 people liked it)

Apr 18, 2011

Amanda rated it:

I tried SO HARD to like this book. This was actually my third attempt to read it and while I did finish it this time, it was still a struggle. I've had many people with different taste in books rave about Catch-22 so I feel crazy for not liking it, but I'm sorry to say that I just found it very boring and difficult to keep reading.

The narration is clever, the message is strong, and the characters definitely have their moments, but for me the parts that made me laugh were few and far be More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 13, 2008

Kye Alfred Hillig rated it:

Hands down my favorite book of all time. The humor of this novel is write up my alley. I would go as far as admitting that I have used the book as a test and those who don't like it don't get me and those who do, do. I love how things snowball in this book and something that seems small at first by the end of the book is a huge avalanche of laughter. This book boasts one of the largest casts of any book I have ever read but I kept track of all of them when reminded and loved them all dearly. The More...

1 comment like (12 people liked it)

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