Book #20 "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D.Salinger: "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're done reading it, you with the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though." (Page 18)
So I'm not going to lie the only reason I picked this book up in the first place is because it is one of the books that Charlie reads in 'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' (Which is an amazing book btw). However, after reading it I find it a bit of a cheat because while I understand that this book was written far before 'Perks of Being a Wallflower' was ever even dreamed up parts of this story were almost the exact same.
Teenage boy going through a bit of a life crises not knowing what direction his life is taking/not knowing if it is all worth it/ or if it will ever be worth it. Then eventually we find both main boys to be in the hospital for mental help.
I had a bit of a hard time getting into Salinger's style of writing if I am going to be honest with you I just don't think it was for me. For one thing he was having everyone cussing just about every other word which for me just felt extremely unnecessary and even at points I found that it took away from what the heck he was trying to get across in the story and all I good think about was 'gee I didn't know someone could cuss that much in one sentence!'.
However, even though all the cussing annoyed me I did like his style of writing with the aspect that he would be having Holden (the main Character) telling us a story about something and before you knew it he would be going down some random rabbit hole telling us something that hardly even relates to what he was talking about until he gets to the end of THAT part of the story only to have us find that he does in fact have a point and that it does all actually tie in together. It just reminded me of the way that people speak that a lot of times we will jump from one topic to the other without rhyme, reason or warning and we just automatically just assume that everyone is going to be able to follow are train of thought at least to some capacity.
In that one aspect alone do I applaud Mr. Salinger, for capturing this simple human element and getting it transferred to paper so well. Even if it did make the story itself dry and rambling at some points. Isn't that the way that life is as well at times? Dry and with out much of a point?
In closing thoughts for this one all I can say is that it felt almost like I was reading a very rough outline for 'POBAW' and that Chbosky basically came along and took most of the good ideas from the book that were not really touched on and simply just expanded.
Would I recommend it? Um, that is kind of hard. I would probably say no. I would probably tell you that you would be better off reading something like 'POBAW' and getting basically the same thing out of it.
And on that note let's move on to our next book for #21 we have "The Phantom of the Opera" by Gaston Leroux. I am a big fan of the movie and soundtrack so I've been looking forward to reading this one for a while. :)
That's all for now,
Michaela Jane
