One in the can...

Well, I finished Catch 22!  And I'm glad I did -- it turned out to be a much better (and different) book than I anticipated.  When I began to read it, I thought it was basically just going to be a funny book.  I also found it incredibly confusing, keeping track of Major this and General that and who the heck is ex-PFC Wintergreen again?  However, as I continued to read and got deeper into the book, I discovered that this is anything but a superficially funny book.  There are characters who seemed funny at first, whom I came to hate by the end of the book (Milo Minderbender especially).  There are scenes so horrible that they practically made me sick, particularly because they are so shockingly juxtaposed to some of the humorous scenes in the book.

Catch 22 is a book that caught me off guard -- and I think that's exactly what Joseph Heller intended.

Next up: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.