Chaos Pavanred's Blog ….. Exponential Error

The Real Catch-22

"Catch-22 is a term coined by Joseph Heller in his novel Catch-22, describing a set of rules, regulations or procedures, or situation which presents the illusion of choice while preventing any real choice." - Wikipedia, of course.

Now, this is the logic behind Catch-22. I just didn't borrow the idea from wikipedia but I read the book and this is more or less the same as I figured. But, I discovered something else too, the real CATCH-22.

To be frank, I barely found this book funny. The idea of an anti-war satire is admirable but the book just doesn't live up. For instance, It's got a protagonist whose character is so different from the stereotypical world war 2 characters, which have extremes of either pride or remorse. But, most of the satire in the book, believe me, isn't very funny. At least, not as much as the scores of reviews across the internet described it as. I read a little over half of the book, and I felt like I was forcing myself hard through it.

I felt, perhaps this is due to the extravagant reviews which set my personal expectations so high that the book seems to be below par. I read user reviews from both Amazon and Shelfari before bought this book and I remember, most of the reviews were so damn promising, I began believing this would be one of the best book I would ever read. One of the reviews was so compelling, it was actually mentioned that the reader literally fell off his chair every time he read the book!! Phew!

Now, getting to the real Catch-22 - The reader has the option of picking up any book under the sun. But, this book is present on almost all "All time best books" compilations and when coupled with these overweening and misleading reviews, it's almost impossible to escape from choosing it.
Damn! I should have believed those negative reviews about this book when I read them, but I just went with the numbers and now it seems like even I have contributed to the real Catch-22 as well. The least, I can to undo this, is to publish my real opinion about the book and that's precisely what this blog entry is.