Back in high school I had once started reading
Catch-22. I got maybe a third of the way through it and really I don't remember why I stopped reading it. Maybe I was just too busy or maybe I just wasn't into it. But
Catch-22 does seem like the kind of book that would be my kind of thing. Wikipedia categorized it as black humor and absurdist fiction... both the kinda books I like. So my opinion on it now... I just couldn't get that into it. I see the good qualities about it and wouldn't argue that it is bad or anything but it just didn't click for me. Maybe the lack of a strong narrative was my problem or that basically it just seemed like the same joke repeated over and over again. If the book was shorter those might not be problems... but the book is a bit long. Maybe another reason that I wasn't into it is just I'm not in the mood right now to read a book about characters like Milo Minderbender that somehow get rewarded for continually doing the wrong and immoral thing and fooling everyone about it. And then there's this quote which is representative
of the whole book and can't help but remind me of a certain someone that I have a very low opinion of -
“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
So let's say B+. Also the book mentions Moby Dick and Bleak House.
