The Catcher in the Rye

Love it. It's one of the greats.
I hate it when classics are described as "bad" - if they were objectively bad books they wouldn't be classics.
You can't argue Catcher in the Rye is a "bad" book; J.D Salinger was in his early thirties when it was published and had had his short stories published in magazines like The New Yorker beforehand: he knew what he was doing guys lol. Holden Caulfield is a brilliant example of a stereotypical teenager; he is hypocritical, judgemental, and completely self-absorbed. Yet, he doesn't want children to have to grow up, he wants to be the catcher in the rye who stops them from blindly plummeting off the Elysian field of youth and down onto the crags of adulthood. The novel is a phenomenal exploration of adolescence and that is indisputable; whether or not you enjoy that exploration is another question altogether.

- oh, and my English teacher once described the novel as being an essential for any true serial killer's bookshelf, so yeah

I'm on a gap year currently and whilst I have a lot of free time I intend to read a lot of classic works of literature. I'm on War and Peace at the minute (and will be for a good while - it's so long!) but The Catcher in the Rye is on my list to buy after I've got through the mountain of books I didn't have time to read during exams haha, would anyone care to give me a quick synopsis of the general plot?

Ah, War and Peace is the next book on my list to read, it's sitting on my desk. Just a bit scared tbh - it seems like a very intimidating book - but I am very excited to start it!

As for The Catcher in The Rye, it is about Holden Caulfield, a guy who narrates the events of a few days post getting expelled from his most recent boarding school. Instead of waiting around the last few days at his school he runs away and roams around New York. Do get back to me when you've finished it; I'd be really interested to know how you found it

Yeah it's quite daunting! Just over 1200 pages I think, and a lot of the speech is in French too which adds on a bit of reading time (although ironically it has proved useful in helping me to learn some French phrases, since I intend to learn a bit during my gap year). It's been good so far though, and my first Tolstoy book - he spends about 100 pages just setting the book-world up, so it was useful that I'd already seen the BBC drama to help me recognise all the characters and put a face to them when reading!

Ah that sounds quite interesting, I look forward to it! I've heard good things about the book so I thought I'd better get round to reading it at some point, it's so nice just to enjoy fiction a bit after all the revising. How long is it, approximately?

Personally i didnt like the book. The plot of was not easy to get into because the character is not likeable at all. He moans about everything in his life when things would easily be rectified if he was more sociable with other people. I understand that he is disaffected but he moans and doesn't try.

i really dont think john lennons killer and the cather in the rye are relevant - the guy was just crazy and was going to kill someone regardless for whatever reasons.

i love the catcher in the rye, first time i tried to read it i couldnt get on board with the american 1950s language of holden and gave up but 20 pages in i grew to love it. i hated holdens character and just thought why cant he just be less of a pain in the **** but i remember feeling exactly like he did at that age.

if you havent already, look up the life of jd salinger, incredibly interesting/weird/sad

I don't know why, but I really didn't like it. I read it in one or two sittings but I don't think I could relate to his character and just found him a bit dull and annoying. I read it about a year ago so I can't remember exactly everything I didn't like about him or the book in general, but I do remember that afterwards I was disappointed because I was expecting it to be amazing. But maybe I need to read it again!

Ah that would be pretty helpful for me too, as I've picked French for A-Level It'll be my first Tolstoy novel as well

The Catcher in the Rye isn't that long at all - only about 200 pages.

Ah, I'm not sure on what the content in A level French is like but W&P has a variety of short phrases, long paragraphs, conversational language and more formal in places so it should help a bit!

Oh that's not too long, should only take a couple of days

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I for one am very fond of the book. I just really liked Holden Caulfield's character, and it's one of the only books where I've laughed out loud tbh.