I don’t remember why I decided to reread this book, and I struggled a lot with it during the first half. It’s something of a classic, and I know that my dad found it uproariously funny, so I would have expected to really enjoy it. It bounced off of me when I first read it (in high school?) and it felt painful to get through this time.

In the second half of the book, though, the dark parts of the book spoke to me in a way that the absurd humor didn’t (which surprised me a lot). I don’t know that I loved the book, but there are several parts that I really appreciated.

• Joseph Heller
• Catch-22