16 of 1001 Books: Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Joseph Heller really has wrote a book like no other I've read with Catch-22. The beginning of the book is really tough to get through, but once you get rolling a hundred or pages so in then you get a better grasp on the satirical humor that Heller has created, and you even begin to get oddly attached to some of the characters like Yossarian and Nately. The humor may not be something you laugh out loud at though unless you've read or seen a lot of war stories. For those who aren't into anti-war books it may make you a bit uneasy to read how idiotic some of the military personnel is portrayed.

Summary: Bombardier, Yossarian, wants out of the war. He has complete the number of missions that he must fly in, and he doesn't the point of continuing to have his life threatened by people he has never met. Every time he nears the number of complete missions he was to be on Colonel Cathcart begins to raise the number again. This prevents anyone new from being brought in, and the keeps the current guys flying out. Yossarian is hoping he can prove himself insane though without having to say it because as Catch-22 paraphrased says, if a man is flying out on these missions he is crazy, but if he request to leave because he is then he has proven he is sane.