Tuesday, March 25, 2008

april's book to ponder...

The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger

(please note, this is not the same as Idaho Falls Reads... we aren't giving away The Catcher In The Rye, but we are encouraging you to read it and add your comments to the blog!)

about the book: 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.

Also, the Washington Post recently review the book, you can read that review here.

I'll start posting questions for the book in April, and I look forward to seeing what you think!

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