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Loading... Catch-22 (1955)by Joseph Heller
  
» 89 more Favourite Books (34) Top Five Books of 2013 (212) BBC Big Read (79) Folio Society (52) Five star books (15) 1960s (9) A Novel Cure (29) BBC Radio 4 Bookclub (11) Read This Next (6) The Greatest Books (41) Read (28) War Stories (6) Modernism (40) Overdue Podcast (13) Reiny (4) 2017 Goal (16) Page Turners (23) First Novels (21) Books Read in 2016 (1,316) Italy Books (1) Best Satires (4) Fiction For Men (102) Dark Fiction (34) 100 World Classics (31) Favorite Long Books (258) Historical Fiction (634) Biggest Disappointments (417) Unread books (905) No current Talk conversations about this book. One of the most important works of the century in English. Go out of your way to read this book. (  ) ProfH | Jan 15, 2017 |  There was only one catch… Catch-22 has been at the top of my all time favorite novels list since I first read it as a high school senior. It was my inspiration for In the Black. I figured if any decade deserved the Joseph Heller Treatment, it was the Sixties. Anyway, I recently read The Bridgebusters, The True Story of the Catch-22 Bomb Wing as well as The True Story of Catch-22: The Real Men and Missions of Joseph Heller’s 340th Bomb Group in World War II, written by the real Colonel Cathcart’s daughter. There was nothing left to do, but come full circle and read the novel itself again–for probably the fourth or fifth time. Knowing the history of the 57th Bomb Wing in which Heller served as a bombardier made his story resonate even more. All I can say is that it remains at the very top of my favorites list. Humor is highly subjective and the novel may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it still makes me laugh out loud. “That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed. “It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed. ( ) mtbass | Dec 29, 2016 | I started off reading this book and immediately thought about Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5" due to the witty banter, jumping around in time (not to the same level as Vonnegut obviously) all around an ongoing war. But the further I got, the more I realised, the best way to describe this is M.A.S.H re-incarnate. The humour has you literally laughing out loud and the war has you nearly in tears. ( ) Scerakor | Dec 20, 2016 | I thought this book was hilarious. And, many years ago, I worked with someone of the same opinion. We would recite to each other dialog from the book. Well, it was often so apt for describing life in the corporate world, not just the military. (  ) CarolJMO | Dec 12, 2016 | This was a novel that I absolutely hated. It was about a man in the airforce, in WWII, named Yossarian who is a cowardly son of a bitch. He thinks of nobody but himself. All his peers die throughout the book due to the war. Comedic, horrible, outrageous, pretentious. Heller takes the worst traits of human nature, throws them all together and presents it as an airforce unit. There was not a single good man in this book. All were cheats, adulterers, cowards, liars, etc, etc. It was not pleasant to read. The whole thrust of Heller's book seems to be that humans are totally horrible creatures and that one must do whatever is necessary to survive. Look out for number one. If he was alive today, even if in a wheelchair with an oxygen can, I'd go right up to him and beat the living snot out of him. Satirizing men who gave up their lives for me is not funny imo. (  ) BookstoogeLT | Dec 10, 2016 |
 "A wild, moving, shocking, hilarious, raging, exhilarating, giant roller-coaster of a book" "the best novel to come out in years"  "doesn't even seem to be written; instead, it gives the impression of having been shouted onto paper.... what remains is a debris of sour jokes"  This kind of magnificent illogic whips like a mistral all through the novel, blowing both sequence and motivation into a rubble of farcical shocks and grisly surprises. Catch-22 is held together only by the inescapable fact that Joseph Heller is a superb describer of people and things... Heller's talent is impressive, but it also is undisciplined, sometimes luring him into bogs of boring repetition... but an overdose of comic non sequitur and an almost experimental formlessness are not enough to extinguish the real fire of Catch-22. "Catch-22," by Joseph Heller, is not an entirely successful novel. It is not even a good novel by conventional standards. But there can be no doubt that it is the strangest novel yet written about the United States Air Force in World War II. Wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome, it is a dazzling performance that will probably outrage nearly as many readers as it delights. In any case, it is one of the most startling first novels of the year and it may make its author famous. Has the adaptationHas as a student's study guideCliffsNotes on Heller's Catch-22 by C. A. Peek Has as a teacher's guide
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Yossarian says, "You're talking about winning the war, and I am talking about winning the war and keeping alive."
"Exactly," Clevinger snapped smugly. "And which do you think is more important?"
"To whom?" Yossarian shot back. "It doesn't make a damn bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead."
"I can't think of another attitude that could be depended upon to give greater comfort to the enemy."
"The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on."
Mirabile dictu, the book holds up post-Reagan, post-Gulf War. It's a good thing, too. As long as there's a military, that engine of lethal authority, Catch-22 will shine as a handbook for smart-alecky pacifists. It's an utterly serious and sad, but damn funny book.
(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:15:09 -0400)
The story of a group of fliers in the Mediterranean during World War II, and their struggles with the psychological stresses of combat and military life.
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