BOTB: Millenium Trilogy (Another Surrey Shrimper) v Catch 22 (Yorkshire B)

[MK Shrimper]

Round 3....

 

[MK Shrimper]

Not read any Stig Larsson but I tried, and failed to get into Catch 22.

 

[Eastblack]

Stig for me. Couldn't take to Catch 22, although I quite enjoyed the film. The Millennium books are excellent, the first being the better of the three.

 

[steveo]

Not read any Stig Larsson

Outstanding books. I read these on holiday and got home and immediately bought the DVD's - English dubbed versions.

 

[southend4ever]

Some great memories at the 'Millenium'

 

[RHB]

Catch 22 was meant to be the COOL book to read when I was a teenager. It was at this point I realised that I was never going to be cool! Stigg for me, thanks!!

 

[Another Surrey Shrimper]

Millennium trio - the 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' and follow ons are enthralling tales that make you read all three chunky journals in quick succession. The main character is the strangest anti-hero to be relied on as the main source of empathy for so many pages. She is a violent, damaged genius that if you met her in real life you wouldn't know how to deal with her but in the written word you root for her the whole way. It's not like other stories - get involved.

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

It was love at first sight.

And it actually was. I still vividly remember where I was when I first picked up this book and how I just couldn't put it down.

The book gripped me from the opening line to the very end with it gloriously combining humour with cutting critique of bureaucracy, capitalism, war and religion. That's way more than the Millennium Trilogy does in three books.

Catch-22 repeatedly leads you one direction before subverting your expectations and heading in the other direction ("The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likeable. In three days no one could stand him."). Heller has a mastery of logic and the absurdity of everyday existence. For it to be trailing Larsson is an injustice of Roget getting sent off against Oxford proportions, an event Heller would have no doubt nailed.

Throughout Heller sublimely highlights the absurdity, paradoxes and circular logic that make up humanity. From the capitalist Milo who bombs his own squadron for their own good and

makes a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta he buy them from for seven cents an egg

to the insanity of war where Yossarian questions who is the enemy when it is his own side who is trying to kill him by sending him off to war

to the paradox that gave the book its name

"Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."

to the brilliance of quotes like

Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

All those who have voted for the Millennium Trilogy, do yourself a favour and go and read Catch-22.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Catch 22 is easily the funniest book ever written.

A bunch of us used to read favourite extracts of it aloud on away trips.Great fun.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Not read any Stig Larsson but I tried, and failed to get into Catch 22.

Did you read about the girl with lime-green panties? :winking:

 

[MK Shrimper]

Did you read about the girl with lime-green panties? :winking:

Worried. :unsure:

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Worried. :unsure:

If you didn't reach that seminal moment in the novel you should re-read it.:smile:

 

[MK Shrimper]

If you didn't reach that seminal moment in the novel you should re-read it.:smile:

Lol, no I generally remember a bit with a knocking shop....

 

[MK Shrimper]

another classic falls...Millenium Trilogy into the last 16.