Tl;dr: Thoughts on Catch 22?

Guy who has barely read anything in his life here, in 2017 I decided I was gonna start reading and a friend of mine recommended I start with Catch 22, he said it was the book that "got him into" literature (I had asked for something accessible).

So I read it without really having any kind of expectations, I didn't know anything about it before I read it, but I really liked it, even though some of it was hard to follow. I mean I'm not saying it was 10/10 GOAT or something, but I found it pretty entertaining/amusing and the ending was pretty feelsy in some ways.

What is Veeky Forums's general consensus about the book? Is it patrician? According to wikipedia it is regarded as "one of the greatest/most significant 20th century works of literature" and I guess it gets taught in high school a lot, but I googled various reviews sites and it seems like a lot of people really hate it for being boring or something.

Start with the greeks

>Jumps out of the window.

i liked it quite a lot, it at least feels different from the typical genre fiction, and it is a step in the right direction. i feel the problem Veeky Forums has is that it reminds one of plebbit. I think if you go forward from this point, you won't have any problems. I mean, typically I would suggest that someone in your situation would go on to read dostoevsky's crime and punishment, just because it's so damn accessible, while still being rewarding in the sphere of literature. you might try dickens as well, david copperfield is quite long, but can teach you a bit of perseverance. There's a lot out there, and catch-22 isn't a bad start at all.

Did you go from giggling to horror when you read it? Like, did you at one time or another wonder when it stopped being humorous, wondered if the beginning set your mind up to think everything was going to be funny, only to let little things creep in, making you laugh at increasingly more fucked up events until you realized what the hell really happened?

>Did you go from giggling to horror when you read it? Like, did you at one time or another wonder when it stopped being humorous, wondered if the beginning set your mind up to think everything was going to be funny, only to let little things creep in, making you laugh at increasingly more fucked up events until you realized what the hell really happened?

The first half of the book made me laugh a lot honestly, but by the time I got to the last few chapters I was actually tense and unnerved by how much darker it got, and how the sense of humor went from being ironic in a kind of silly way to being ironic in a pretty sadistic way. The death of Snowden, with his guts suddenly falling out of his body, was pretty shocking.

I felt like the ending was pretty abrupt though, like when I got to the end I was kind of like "Wait, that's it, they aren't gonna expand on that last section at all?"

well, i believe heller wrote a sequel and then some, though the reviews were mixed. I remember the propellor scene being funny at the time but only just realizing that it was actually horrifying, but that the atrocity was so placed that i was still in maximum comfy mode. anyhow, yeah i haven't read anything like catch-22 since then, and most people here will direct you to gravity's rainbow, and that's fine too, if a bit difficult. anyway i must be off to a dentist appt. best of luck to you, and don't stop turning those pages!

Sooooooooooooooo overrated

Basically lolsorandumb the book. I'll admit some parts were funny, but it got real old real fast. Also some of the erotic parts made me horny, and the last 100 pages or so were good, but boy was it a chore to get to the finish line with this overrated doorstopper

>450 pages
>doorstopper

>lolsorandumb the book

In what way...? Almost everything ends up being connected in some way by the end. The book just takes an admittedly really long time setting up all the characters.

I can see how some people wouldn't like the style of humor though, and it does get repetitive at times, but the payoff for when everything "gets real" is very good IMO.

Thanks!

Bump.

>seeking approval from internet oddballs this hard
It's great, but why the hell would you need Veeky Forums to tell you that?

I'm not really seeking approval, I was just curious honestly.

Veeky Forums kinda has a reputation on other boards for being super pretentious about reading and taking it extremely seriously in ways that are different from, for example, the way /mu/ treats music or the way /tv/ treats film.

It's a great novel. Some people don't like it for the simple reason that it's funny.

Go read All The Pretty Horses, and if you like it, read the rest of The Border Trilogy.

Catch-22 is prolly the only book I've read that I'd describe as perfect. Not my fave book, but I feel like every sentence is necessary and good and worth rereading. Perfect, y'know? one of the GOAT no doubt

hey is your friend Josh because I'm Josh and I said this to my friend once

Nah I don't know anyone named Josh.

I really enjoyed it when I read it a year or so back. The way it went from funny and silly to horrifying almost without my notice was genuinely unsettling. And I still remember the man all wrapped up in bandages with one tube going in, one going out, and every day the nurses would swap them around.

The way colonel cathcart thinks is exactly how I think and make decisions. Always think about if my action will give me a black eye in the eyes of the world

Hemingway is a pretty good entry into reading in general, I think. Maybe For Whom the Bell Tolls, and move on to the Green Hills of Africa.

All Quite on the Eastern Front and Johnny Got His Gun were what did it for me though.

Did you not feel the repetition added to the feeling the book was meant to express? That war was horrific, meaningless and repetitive.

It's the middle chapter that hits people this way due to the overuse of "X said, Y said, X replied" and sir this sir that. I can't help but feel it was intentional. There to bore you to tears just like some parts of warfare would have been.

And if you want a really easy, fun and light read try the old man and the sea.

What's a good translation for Crime and Punishment?
Oliver Ready any good?

i would just look at a few different excerpts. i always just go with garnett, because she's my main bitch and i'd never betray her. for you, i'd just go with whatever's comfortable. it might not sound fun, but just look up a couple of books that scan well in your mind and then read it. don't think too much about it. if afterwards you have reservations, go back and read another translation sometime.

Thanks mate

>All Quite on the Eastern Front

Did you mean "All Quiet On The Western Front"? That's mostly what comes up when I google that.

Thanks for the recs.

Read this, OP.

Veeky Forums's elitism is actually pretty refreshing,
I think, as long as you accept that at least 50% of it is memeing. There are plenty of places online to discuss airport fiction and YA vampire books without being laughed at.

By contrast, /mu/ takes its 'my tastes are objectively correct' meme way too far, and also gets hilariously elitist despite the fact that 99% of what it discusses is pop music. It would be as if Veeky Forums was incredibly proud of itself for reading Tolkien instead of Twilight.

/tv/ in my opinion is just a total meme-ridden car crash where it's impossible to discuss anything. When they do attempt the elitist thing, it fails spectacularly because their idea of refined taste is basically not liking cape movies.

Great taste, user.

yes he did.

Yeah I agree with you. /mu/ is generally my home board, but my new year's resolution was to start reading. And /tv/ is awful, I quit that board a while ago.

Just a single year ago, it was actually possible to discuss The Sopranos on /tv/, as it was the only series that hadn't yet been turned into failed meems.

Now, you can't even have a simple Sopranos discussion without terrible meems like "shut the door" and "gabagool".

/tv/ is fucking cancer.

Baneposting is pure art though

>There, there. There there.

I'm cold... I'm cold .

Fuck, that part was genuinely unsettling.

why the fuck do you idiots need to make a post asking or permission to read a book?

Fucking read it and find out for yourself.

Protip: if you post a thread asking about any book, some people will say they like it, and some say they hated it, no matter what book it is.

If you had read the thread or even the OP you would realize that I wasn't "asking for permission", I have already read it and just wanted to hear some other opinions.