I found this a really good book.

Don't let the morons who only got 70 pages into this deter you. This is one of the most richly rewarding books ever written. Leave them to their Danielle Steele and Dan Brown; the adults in the room will be reading things like this.

80. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. 464 pages. American Literature.
I found this an amazingly bizarre, dark-humor approach to military life as an institution during World War Two. Yossarian is like Hawkeye Pierce of MASH fame during the Korean War. Very hard to follow, with numberous colorful characters. Critics called this the greatest book to come out of WWII, but I strongly disagree. I could only give this a 2.5 Star rating.  

Hilarious! MASH in book form. The absurdity of war is a common topic, but Heller nails it with such humor and irony!

While I was reading this book, my English teacher told me that as I read, and when I finish (for the first time) I should be confused. I suppose I at least did that right. Despite finding myself often confused I enjoyed "Catch-22" immensely. I laughed out loud multiple times a chapter (usually) and whenver I was reading near people, I read them sentences out of context that probably held no significance for them, but I found riotous. The only other hang-up I had with the book was that sometimes the irony seemed forced and over-the-top, almost juvenile. Most of it, however, was pure genius. 

Catch-22 is the best novel written in the second half of the twentieth century. This is because, while thousands of brilliant books have been written that are more accomplished than Catch-22 in one or more literary categories, only works that take on the central issues of modernity can truly be considered among the"best". This is because the issues of modernity are the most terrifying that have ever confronted humans: the Holocaust, the existence of God, total war, totalitarianism, capitalism, the double-edge power of modern technology, the value of logic, Enlightenment thinking, and, ultimately, whether existence has, in the end, any point.
Read the first chapter of Catch-22, again -- for you have to read it again and again to see -- and you'll realize that Heller sets these incredibly high stakes in the in the first three pages. But it's all done through character and plot, and so openly that, like Poe's purloined letter, you are almost certain to miss it. Yet, it's there. And, so, too, unlike as in the works other great writers who took on the same issues, such as Beckett, Catch-22 dares to declare an answer to the questions of the modern world. Again, it's plain as day -- in the last six words of the book -- and only understandable if you've followed Heller into his universe. That universe only seems absurd, disorganized, and lost in pointless tangents. The more you read it, the more you realize that every word of Catch-22 carries an exact purpose, and in an exact place.
There are great writers who have done what Heller has done in Catch-22: Tolstoy, Foster-Wallace, Grass, Levi, Saramago, Gordimer, Dostoevsky, Camus, Sartre, Naipul, Rushdi, Percy, McEwan, Resnais, Calvino, Brodsky, Singer, Bellow,,,,
But Catch-22 is funny. Every kind of funny: philosopically, ironically, cruelly, slap-stick, linguistically, belly-laugh, and, above all, sarcastically. Catch-22, once you get the hang of it, is just goddamn good fun. I've never read another novel (Calvino's short storie's, yes) that pulls off fun and brilliance in the same moment.
I've read it 26 times. I'm still in awe. 

Satirical comedy that has a good bit of meaning and asks the questions most philosophers propose when it comes to the ideology of war.

Truly a classic. Hilarious until the very end. Five stars!

Pretty cynical. Plenty of comedy and satire, but a bit pessimistic. As a reader I don't like to focus on the negative, or be left feeling hopeless, but at least it's realistic in that not everything has a fairy tale ending. Amazingly well written. Great characters that to this day I still relate to and quote. Some classic scenes and dialogues.  

2009
This was his first novel! The structure is so clever and so complicated - how did he do it? It's as wonderful as ever, but I seemed to read it more consciously this time, observing how the events unfolded even as they folded back on themselves. Heller's a magician, and I'm not surprised that the book isn't dated at all - the issues remain the same.