Rating: 
Summary: Make the Catch!
Review: Catch 22's basic purpose is to show the chaos and stupidity of war. It also shows that wars aren't fought only against the enemy, but against ourselves. They are fought on the bases against clashing egos and people with no sense and those with too much sense. A person who would enjoy this book doesn't have to be just a fan of war novels. A book like this can appeal to a vast number of persons because it is so fun to read. It can also appeal to those who like the unusual and thought provoking. Yossarian is a bombardier who seems to be the wrong person in the wrong squadron. When he censors letters, he cuts about everything out and signs the aliases 'Irving Washington' or 'Washington Irving'. When he presented with a medal, he marches down the ramp naked. But it seems every time Yossarian is close to completing his tour of duty, the mission number is raised by five. While many crews in other squads are going home at 50 missions, Yossarian's group is at 80 and counting. So Yossarian decides enough is enough and refuse to fly more missions. This creates quite a stir between him and his superiors. This creates chaos in the squadron with the threat others will soon refuse to fly. Yossarian offered a deal: He can return back to the states and no one would have known about this or, due to insubordination, desertion, cowardice in the face of the enemy and several other charges, he will be court-martialed. We see various colorful characters throughout the book, including General Dreedle, Colonel Korn, Colonel Cathcart, Lieutenant Scheisskopf, Nately, Hungry Joe, Major ------ de Coverley, Nately's whore kid sister and Major Major, among many others. Not many of these characters have importance to the text. However, some of them make the book more fun to read and others add to the backdrop. "The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on." This quote (Which also appears in the amzon.com review above) is important in that it shows the two sides of which war is fought. For example, the number of missions is continually raised by the squadron's commanding officers, thus increasing the squadron's chances of getting killed. The quote also shows the meaningless of war. Why should you care about who wins if you are dead? Or who is really the enemy in war? I wasn't sure as to what style Heller used. The book is not organized confusingly, but its tone changes throughout. We are presented with thrills, drama, horror and humor. Perhaps this is meant to show how well mixed our own lives are It can be called an anti-war novel, but unlike Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Catch-22 is a satire. There are some audiences that may not like Catch-22. Like I said, it has varying changes of attitude plus has somewhat explicit content concerning sex and language. Also, the novel has rather large cast of people and not all of them have importance to the story line. Nevertheless, except for romance and possibly mystery, Catch-22 has enough elements to appeal to a wide audience. I have tried to review Catch-22, but I think that no one review can fully comprehend Heller's work. I'm sure that there is some more depth in the novel than I have touched on in this analysis. The novel has to be read and read again and again before it is fully understood. But this is what good novels should do. Catch-22 I liked because I like war novels and because it leaves much to think about. If there is something to dislike about it, it seems to me that the book's end leaves an open gap, possibly for a sequel that never came. Also, at over 400 pages, this is a very long read and takes some getting into. But once you do, the book doesn't stop and delivers in whole. Thus, I recommend Catch-22 (And would give it ten stars if possible) for its anti-war message, its themes about humanity and for the fact it's just so fun.
Rating:
Summary: Great and Funny Book
Review: When I first opened Catch-22 I was throughly confused. Their are a whole lot of plot threads that arise that you don't find out about until a great deal of the way through the book. But after I got through the first 75 pages the novel began to come into picture.
Heller's book is ...funny in places and also pretty sad in others. For people who don't find this book funny they need to lighten up. Though the humor is far from sophisticated it's still pretty hilarious. I loved the whole backwards name thing, Washington Irving and Irving Washington. And how can you not laugh at Major Major Major. General Dreedle scaring ... people by threatening to have them shot is also great.
The book can be pretty sobering too. Yossarian is dreadfully affraid dying and when he has a nervous breakdown in the air you are watching someone unravel.
Overall this is one of my favorite books. So if your a wise [alek]pacifist or someone who enjoys a good book, then pick this up. If you take yourself to seriously, feel your beyond hype and all "classics" suck, then don't bother.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars don't even begin to define this masterpiece of irony
Review: I still love reading this book, even 30 years after I first found it. There is no better indictment of the military-industrial complex, but of course the story works on numerous levels. It is as timely now as it has ever been. Perhaps even more so. And the writing? Well, take for instance: "Major Major had been born too late and too mediocre. Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have medioricty thrust up them. With Major Major it had been all three. Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was." Read. Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Second Best
Review: This is the second best book of the 1900s.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic.
Review: If you like a good story, then do yourself a favour and read Catch-22. If there is one book everyone should read atleast once in their life, it's this one.
Rating:
Summary: My Favorite book ever
Review: I have been searching a long time for a book that was as catching as Catch-22, and no book has ever come up that is as wonderful and as this one.
I first read it while I was in Japan about a year and a half ago and in about three days I had finished it, after I had read it I was in a state of overall satisfaction, no book has ever made me feal this before. Since then I have read it four times over.
Yossarian, the main charecter of this book, lives in a perpetual state of sanity which can make any normal, insane person almost dangerously sane. The book is set in a small island in the mediteranean filled with insane bombers, save Yossarian. Crazy ... happens and so on and so on.
The best book I have ever read, if you like comedic books with a tinge of sanity, then you will love this book.
Rating: 
Summary: War is Hell; War is Fun
Review: This long novel took me awhile to finish but it was worth the effort. I gave up early on and came back to it after reading one good review after another. The first few hundred pages can be confusing and even dull. Heller's disjointed out-of order story telling technique is very hard to come to grips with. There are some entertaining passages even at the beginning but you have to slog through many dimwitted puns. There are some scenes that are quite funny. The best, in my mind, is a scene near the end, where Yossarian is offered the chance to go home by the Colonels that have been tormenting him. There's only one catch, he has to agree to like them, to be their pal, and say good things about them. This is unacceptable and he chooses instead to run away. Skip the puerile chapter titled "Major Major Major Major." The one joke of this insult to the reader's intelligence is the character's name: Major Major Major and the rank he is automatically promoted to on joining the army. It gets better after the slow start and story begins to come together once you get halfway through. Yossarian, or Yo-Yo to his friends, is the unhappy and psychotic bombardier who is the central character of this non-story. He's afraid of dying and is upset that his superiors have repeatedly raised the number of combat missions he must fly before he can go home. His friends are killed while incompetent, evil people are promoted and prosper. The black-marketeers Ex-PFC Wintergreen and especially Milo Minderbinder get rich. He's haunted by the memory of a fellow flyer (Snowden) dying in his arms over Avignon. Whether you think this novel is a good or not, it exists and many people who have never read the book are familiar with the title phrase. Heller uses Yossarian's situation to makes some points about the absurdity of war and, perhaps, of modern life in a Capitalist society. He points out that you are "free" just as long as you never actually want to use any of your freedom. It's interesting to see a depiction of American soldiers during WWII who have absolutely no patriotic or heroic feelings but are only concerned with saving their skin or perhaps profiting from the situation they are in. Mailer, in The Naked and the Dead, and other authors have expressed these sentiments better. This take on war and American society came to be the norm in the aftermath of the Vietnam War but it probably seemed very subversive when this book came out in 1961.
Rating:
Summary: Always question authority
Review: I read this book as part of a high school
independent study program. I almost had to
take the course over again in summer because
part of my review of contemporary America
authors included a book-Catch 22-which was
not on the School Boards "Approved Books"
list. When I asked why wasn't it on the list,
they answered that it wasn't on the list because
it wasn't approved for independent study. Hhhm...
what was this book about? To make a long story
relatively short, they begrudingly gave me a passing
grade and I wrote my first newspaper column for an
underground newspaper in Chicago. Read this book.
Question authority.
Rating:
Summary: Ingenius
Review: Generally, when students recieve a list of books to read for school, they can expect to spend many nights toiling away at what teachers think is fine literature. I had no great expectations of Catch-22 when I bought it. I had chosen this book because I had heard the expression Catch-22 used before, and figured it must be somewhat intresting if it was a fairly common expression. The first two or three chapters went slowly like most books, somewhat difficult to understand why the Yossarian character was signing documents under other people's names. As the book progressed Joesph Heller becomes, in my mind one of the greatest comic geniuses of all time. Ever joke in this book is a long-running joke throughout the book. Everything that could go wrong does. The theory of Catch-22 is so realistic it is comical. The entire book shows the horror of war, but creates a laughable atmosphere about it. There are several dark, and even grusome scenes in this book, however Heller seems to take a comical approach to all of them starting jokes about them the next chapter. The jokes in this book never end, each joke is seen again and again, until the very humorous end. Don't be mistaken, although this book had me rolling on the floor laughing several times, it is also a great historical drama about life during World War 2 and the realism of fighting and Yossarian's fear of death for fighting something he doesn't belive in. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book to all readers, as it is a Classic and is some of hte most enjoyable 400-something pages you'll read, more than likely, several times.
Rating:
Summary: slapstick humor? No.
Review: I first read Catch-22 in high school, and it has left a lasting impression on me. My take on the book was that the circle of insanity was the very thing that was holding the characters together to make it through their lives, keeping them sane. Life is often a contradiction. Like the good ol' military term: Hurry up, and wait.
When I watched the movie of this same title I was literally ill by the way the characters were portrayed. Read the book, it's a whole other story. You never once get a sense of the pain that the characters are suffering through in the movie, as you do in the book.
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