The phrase catch-22 has come into popular use to describe a less formal style of double bind, a cyclical conundrum, or "no-win situation". A catch-22 situation is inherently self-defeating: the very act of trying to solve it prevents it from happening. I have always dug this term. I had my first run in with circular logic after college when I faced the entry-level dilemma: You need experience to get a job and you need a job to get experience.

Luckily, I've managed to avoid both.

When I learned that the phrase was derived from a book title, particularly from a book about the horrors of WWII, I picked 'er up. Eighty pages later I put 'er down, having overdosed on circular logic. That was about a year ago.

Well, I recently picked it up for a second go-around (Just cause it gets so much damn praise from book-types: Random House has Catch-22 listed as the 7th best novel of all time, 6 spots ahead of 1984!).

This time I hit page eighty running, and ended up knocking out the 400-some pages in a matter of days (I am typically a pretty slow reader). The book is long, it has 38 major characters and is exhausting at parts but...it's damn good. Damn, damn good.