We've rounded up 20 great books we think everyone should read by 50

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Reading lists

20 books everyone should read in their fifties

Something Happened

A cult classic, Something Happened is considered by some to be an even finer achievement than Catch-22. This is Heller's funny, honest and tragic tale of a failed American dream, relaunched in Vintage Classics for a generation brought up on Black Mirror

One of the most pleasurable, engrossing, and in retrospect moving American novels ever written… The most criminally overlooked great novel of the past half century is a book called Something Happened

It is splendidly put together and hypnotic to read. It is as clear and hard-edged as a cut diamond. Mr. Heller's concentration and patience are so evident on every page that one can only say that "Something Happened" is at all points precisely what he hoped it would be

I used to think Catch-22 was my best novel until I read Kurt Vonnegut's review of Something Happened. Now I think Something Happened is

A supremely controlled and meticulous masterpiece, grounded in the horror of daily living

Joseph Heller was born in 1923 in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a bombardier in the Second World War and then attended New York University and Columbia University and then Oxford, the last on a Fullbright scholarship. He then taught for two years at Pennsylvania State University, before returning to New York, where he began a successful career in the advertising departments of Time, Look and McCall's magazines. It was during this time that he had the idea for Catch-22. Working on the novel in spare moments and evenings at home, it took him eight years to complete and was first published in 1961. His second novel, Something Happened was published in 1974, Good As Gold in 1979 and Closing Time in 1994. He is also the author of the play We Bombed in New Haven.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF CATCH-22, SOON TO BE A TV SERIES ON CHANNEL 4 
 
Joseph Heller's other masterpiece - a darkly comic, sometimes tragic satire that does for the American Dream what Catch-22 did for the madness of war 
 
'Joseph Heller's finest achievement' Jonathan Coe 
 
Bob Slocum was a promising executive. He had an attractive wife, three children, a nice house, and as many mistresses as he desired. His life was settled and ordered; he had conformed and society demanded he be happy - or at least pretend to be. But the pretence was becoming more and more difficult, as Slocum's discontent grew into an overwhelming sense of desolation, frustration and fear. 
 
And then something happened. . . 
 
'One of the most pleasurable, engrossing, and in retrospect moving American novels ever written… The most criminally overlooked great novel of the past half century is a book called Something Happened' LA Review of Books

Vintage Minis

Work

Vintage Minis bring you the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human – from birth to death and everything in between

It is splendidly put together and hypnotic to read. It is as clear and hard-edged as a cut diamond

Imagine our joy when Vintage announced that it is publishing a collection of easily digestible books from the world’s most celebrated writers on the experiences that make us human… They look good and read well. That’s win/win in our book.

Bob Slocum is anxious, bored and fearful of his job. So why is it he wants nothing more than the chance to speak at the next company convention? In this darkly satirical book, Joseph Heller takes us for a turn on the maddening hamster wheel of work. Heller’s workplace is a cradle of paranoia, bravado and nauseating banter, forever shadowed by that perennial question, who’s really running the show here? In Heller’s hands, our daily grind has never seemed so absurd. 
 
Selected from the book Something Happened by Joseph Heller 
 
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human 
 
Also in the Vintage Minis series: 
Drinking by John Cheever 
Swimming by Roger Deakin 
Liberty by Virginia Woolf 
Death by Julian Barnes

Good As Gold

A third-rate academic gets set for a glittering life in politics, but nothing goes as planned...

The satire comes closer than ever before to home, both in terms of Heller's own background and the state of his nation

Joseph Heller was born in 1923 in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a bombardier in the Second World War and then attended New York University and Columbia University and then Oxford, the last on a Fullbright scholarship. He then taught for two years at Pennsylvania State University, before returning to New York, where he began a successful career in the advertising departments of Time, Look and McCall's magazines. It was during this time that he had the idea for Catch-22. Working on the novel in spare moments and evenings at home, it took him eight years to complete and was first published in 1961. His second novel, Something Happened was published in 1974, Good As Gold in 1979 and Closing Time in 1994. He is also the author of the play We Bombed in New Haven. Joseph Heller died in 1999.

On paper, Bruce Gold seems to have carved a comfortable niche for himself. But in the flesh, he's not so impressive. His ancient father thinks he's a fool, his children fail to notice him and even his wife doesn't realise he's no longer living with her. Gold's been promised a prestigious government post in Washington - only he's never been told what the position actually is. Hugely funny and sweetly sad, Good as Gold is the story of children grown up, parents grown old, anad lovers grown apart.

Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition

50th anniversary of Catch 22's publication. Yossarian lives!

Never has a book been laughed and wept over so many times

To my mind, there have been two great American novels in the past fifty years. Catch-22 is one

Catch-22 is the only war novel I've ever read that makes any sense

Blessedly, monstrously, bloatedly, cynically funny and fantastically unique. No one has ever written a book like this

Catch-22 is the greatest satirical work in English since Erewhon...remarkable... This is a book that I could wish everyone to read. It is a book which should help us feel more clearly

The greatest satirical work in the English language

A wondrous book with many layers. When I first read it at 14 the story of war and passion really inspired me. It was like reading something in neon: everything came alive. As a teenager you start to feel the world is against you and I identified strongly with Yossarian and his dilemma. One of the funniest things I've ever read.

Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1923. In 1961, he published Catch-22, which became a bestseller and, in 1970, a film. He went on to write such novels as Something Happened, God Knows, Picture This, Closing Time (the sequel to Catch-22), and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. Heller died in December 1999.

Explosive, subversive, wild and funny, 50 years on the novel's strength is undiminished. Reading Joseph Heller's classic satire is nothing less than a rite of passage. 
 
Set in the closing months of World War II, this is the story of a bombardier named Yossarian who is frantic and furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. His real problem is not the enemy - it is his own army which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. If Yossarian makes any attempts to excuse himself from the perilous missions then he is caught in Catch-22: if he flies he is crazy, and doesn't have to; but if he doesn't want to he must be sane and has to. That's some catch...

Catch 22

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

A burlesque epic in the tradition of THE GOOD SOLDIER SCHWEIK, CATCH-22 exposes the absurdity of war by applying its own demented logic to America's involvement in Korea. The 'catch' is that soldiers have to claim to be mad in order to get out of fighting - but being capable of making such a claim automatically proves them sane. With a cast of magnificently larger-than-life characters who are rushed along at a breathless pace, for once this really is a novel it's hard to put down. CATCH-22 was made into a film.

Joseph Heller

Howard Jacobson

Discover Joseph Heller's hilarious and tragic satire on military madness, and the tale of one man's efforts to survive it. 
 
It's the closing months of World War II and Yossarian has never been closer to death. Stationed in an American bomber squadron off the coast of Italy, each flight mission introduces him to thousands of people determined to kill him. 
 
But the enemy above is not Yossarian's problem - it is his own army intent on keeping him airborne, and the maddening 'Catch-22' that allows for no possibility of escape. 
 
'The greatest satirical work in the English language' Observer 
 
'The most devastating satire ever written about the lunacy of war and military bureaucracy' Antony Beevor 
 
INTRODUCED BY HOWARD JACOBSON

Joseph Heller

Books by Joseph Heller

Articles featuring Joseph Heller

20 books everyone should read in their fifties

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