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Catch-22

Joseph Heller

Start date: November 1, 2022

Finish date: November 30, 2022

Discussion: New School Classics- 1915-2005

Discussion leader: Trisha

Why we're reading this: Contemporary Classic Group Read, November 2013

November 2022 Revisit the Shelf
[close] Contemporary Classic Group Read, November 2013

November 2022 Revisit the Shelf

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Showing 2 of 393 topics — 15,670 comments total

New School Classics- 1915-2005

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What Members Thought

Jan 23, 2023 RJ - Slayer of Trolls rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, guardian-1000-read, 1001-books-read

What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.

This brilliant piece of absurdist humor, with its circular reasoning and twisted logic that lampoons not just war but society in general, hit Amer ...more

32 likes · Like · see review

May 16, 2012 Nadine in NY Jones rated it did not like it

Shelves: 1001-books, book-club-read, classic, did-not-finish

Book club pick for June 2012, and I'm having a really hard time with it. Got through the first few chapters, but by the end I was skimming. I really dislike Yosarian, and I find the author's attempts at wit to be tiresome. Uh-oh, yet another book club pick that I am hating! I've had a really bad track record with book club picks. Starting to wonder why I'm even in the book club.

*

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm not going to read this book. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

May 14, 2013 spoko rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, humor

I'm not actually going to finish it. I'm about halfway through (Chapter 21), and I wanted to stick it out, because there are things I like about the book. But I'm enjoying it less and less, and I don't think it's going to redeem itself.

My chief complaint is that the humor is wearing thin. Heller keeps leaning on the same kinds of jokes--twisted, circuitous dialogue that ends in frustration and misunderstanding all around. It's funny at first, but the effectiveness of the technique is more and mo ...more

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May 30, 2015 Lisa rated it liked it

Shelves: 2015-reads, rory-gilmore-challenge

Started at a 1 for me and I considered quitting. Moved up to a 2, and I decided to tough it out. But by the end of the book, I liked how the random, stray, confusing parts came together, and I finished it in an attitude of wanting to know the end.

Not a chronological book, and full of "inside joke" moments that get explained by the end. So it starts crazy confusing, but eventually makes some sense. Monty Python like humor. ...more

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Jan 26, 2009 Samantha rated it it was ok

I was not too fond of this book. I listened to it on audio book, and while I found parts of it somewhat amusing, it seemed as though the book was just a series of loosely connected accounts between the characters. I was hardly able to keep my attention focused on it.

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