Classics

Doerr paints WWII with words so good you can almost smell the bread. The story is sad but hopeful. It’s got brains and heart, even if sometimes it wanders off like my dog after the mail truck.

Heller’s Catch-22 is a wild mess of war and nonsense. The characters are weirder than my uncle at Thanksgiving, and the rules make even less sense. You'll laugh, groan, then laugh again. It's chaos, but clever chaos.