The Catcher in the Rye

#11.

And I’m done! I read 10 classics this year. I finished The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger about an hour ago. This was another book that I didn’t read in high school, like every other American teenager. It just wasn’t on the list. Although I can see why it possibly wasn’t on the list.

The main character, Holden Caulfied—with a very privileged name of course—is kicked out of another private school and narrates a very strange 48 hours after this event.

He’s all over the place from his private school to New York City, out to bars, meeting up with old friends and making new ‘friends’—and of course calling everyone phony along the way. Throughout the whole book I was questioning his character and whether any of this was reality or all in his head. I was convinced he was lying and making shit up for a good majority of the book. 

At the end I was expecting something big to happen. Whether it was suicide or some freak accident, but it just kind of ended. We know Holden was having some sort of psychotic episode during all of this—clear from the beginning, and is now getting the treatment he needs.

I liked the book. It was a pretty quick read. Various points drove me a bit crazy, but overall I liked it.

Now I can go download and read the Hunger Games! 

1. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
3. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
6. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
7. Animal Farm by George Orwell
8. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
9. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
10. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger