Matt is reading this classic again becasue...
I've literally read Catcher in the Rye every summer since I was 14 years old and it never ceases to amaze and touch me; I get something new out of it each time I read it. Even though I practically know it by heart, I still laugh and tear up at the same parts each time, and I consider the book to be one of my oldest and best friends.
About the book
The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins,
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."
His constant wry observations about what he encounters, from teachers to phonies (the two of course are not mutually exclusive) capture the essence of the eternal teenage experience of alienation. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
For fans of
- Coming of age stories
- Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks
- Jonathan Franzen
- It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
About the reader
Matt Medeiros
Matt has recommended the following book in previous years:
- Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger