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Book Review - Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

I remember reading this book in high school and I remember enjoying it so I was looking forward to re-reading it (even if it is over 450 pages long). As I remembered it was a very entertaining book and was a pretty easy read. The constant infusion of satirical and ludicrously comical situations in an environment of war and death provided an ever-intriguing canvas on which to paint the story of Yossarian, the main character of the book.

To give a glimpse of the feel of the book, I figure I would include a (long) snippet of the book leading up to the first mention of the infamous Catch-22:

Doc Daneeka snickered once and was soon immersed in problems of his own, which included Chief White Halfoat, who had been challenging him all that morning to Indian wrestle, and Yossarian, who decided right then and there to go crazy.
"You're wasting your time," Doc Daneeka was forced to tell him.
"Can't you ground someone who's crazy?"
"Oh, sure. I have to. There's a rule saying that I have to ground anyone who's crazy."
"Then why can't you ground me? I'm crazy. Ask Clevinger."
"Clevinger? Where is Clevinger? You find me Clevinger and I'll ask him."
"Then ask any of the others. They'll tell you how crazy I am."
"They're crazy."
"Then why don't you ground them?"
"Why don't they ask me to ground them?"
"Because they're crazy, that's why."
"Of course they're crazy," Doc Daneeka replied. "I just told you they're crazy, didn't I? And you can't let crazy people decide whether you're crazy or not, can you?"
Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?"
"He sure is," Doc Daneeka said.
"Can you ground him?"
"I sure can, but first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule."
"Then why doesn't he ask you to?"
"Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to."
"That's all he has to do to be grounded?"
"That's all. Let him ask me."
"And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked.
"No. Then I can't ground him."
"You mean there's a catch?"
"Sure there's a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."

I hope that that is enough to give a glimpse of the style of the book. This still remains one of my favorite books (even outside the realm of school-required reading) and it was a pleasure to get to read it again. I highly recommend it and hope it was good enough that the momentum will carry through my next book, 1984. :-)

Getting back into the groove of working out

I recently decided that I needed to really step it up and start getting back into my workout routine. Between some scheduling issues and injuries, 2009 ended on a pretty lazy and weight-gaining foot. I have been looking for a while for a good way to log my working out to keep track of things, and so far I've really been enjoying Map My Fitness. It is really easy for me to import workouts from my gps or phone when I do outdoor activities, and it has way more fields than I could imagine needing when it comes to logging workouts. I think one of the things I like the most is the visual workout calendar. Here's my January.


I really like that I not only have an easy visual of how I'm doing and some basic stats, but that the icons kinda match the type of activity. Having this has been a good motivator because I really don't like the idea of having little gaps where I don't have a workout icon! :-) I've still been mostly taking weekends off, which I like because I never know what my weekend schedules will look like. I'm going to try to step up my aerobic more in February so hopefully, by the end of the month, I'll have an even more jam-packed calendar! After the food fest that was this past weekend, I am definitely going to need it. :-)