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Comment by gwern | Hacker News Reader

Amusingly, _Catch-22_ is the only book to make both this list (which focuses more on prestigious or famous books rather than books anyone tries to read) and also my list of most-dropped books compiled from GoodReads statistics: https://gwern.net/goodreads

I find that strange because I liked _Catch-22_ and found it easy to read! (And easier than _Genji_, _Solitude_, or _Brief History_.)

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Boy am I glad to see American Gods on that list. I started reading it on someone else's recommendation, whom I obviously should not have trusted. I gave up halfway, convinced that Neil Gaiman is a pen name of Garth Marenghi.

To anyone who gave up American Gods: you're right, they're wrong.

Yeah, I finished it, but wasn't impressed. Some clever ideas that came to nothing in the end.

I really enjoyed American Gods but it took me a long time to finish. I assumed it was because my attention span was getting worse but I hadn't considered that it was just a tough book to read. The books I've read since have been non fiction which are also slow reads for me which supported my, hopefully incorrect, hypothesis.

Are you talking trash about Garth Marenghi?!

Garth Marenghi - author, dream weaver, visionary, plus actor? Honestly he's the one thing that makes this world worth putting up with.

I really didn't enjoy Catch-22 because it felt like a short story dragged out to 200 plus pages, just repeating the same observation about war again and again each chapter.

I was amused to see Catch 22 on the list, a book I probably started a dozen times or more over a decade and would put down after a chapter or two.

Then one time I picked it up and something was different. I read it cover to cover over a few days and loved it.

I was forced to read Catch-22 for a college course (“The American Novel”) so maybe that helped, but I loved it. I remember walking through the hallways of my alma mater with the book in my face and suddenly succumbing to fits of laughter.

I agree on _Catch-22_, but then again I found _The Glass Bead Game_ not only easy but inspiring, so YMMV.

Edit: (maybe both of them suffer from the 1940's context?)

I loved Catch-22 and Gengi. Gengi has a kind of hypnotizing quality to the writing that kept me going.

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