Goodreads Ireland discussion

I also found it to be a shockingly bad book and was too baffled by people finding it to be one of the best books they've read. It's definitely a marmite book.

I read this in my late teens and really enjoyed it at the time but you're right in that, even then, I noticed a lot of repetition that tended to get a bit annoying. I thought it was funny in a bleak kind of way but its not one I'd bother reading again ( I subsequently read his book on King David (God Knows) which had the same repetitive style. I didn't think that was too bad but I haven't tried any of his other books as a result of the first two. I think Catch-22 was a book of its time and said a lot of important things that no-one else was saying during that period (and softened it with humour) so, overall, I can see why it was lauded at the time.