Rating: 
Summary: Great book for teens!
Review: The first time I read this book was my first year of middle school...when everyone begins to grow up, question everything, and hate the world about 90% of the time. This was a perfect time to read this book because Holden Caulfield, the main character, is a teenager who is very relatable to most adolescents.The book talks about subjects that most teens are interested in, including the opposite sex, parents, and college. Holden Caulfield is a 16 year old boy growing up in the 1950s who just got kicked out of prep school, and doesn't know how to tell his strict parents. He takes us through a few days in New York City, and shares with us his fast maturation after realizing how much he loves his little sister Phoebe. The way that J.D. Salinger gave depth to Holden makes any girl want to marry this fictional character by the end of the book. He's sarcastic writing makes this book never a bore.
Rating:
Summary: A Gem
Review: The first time I read this, I didn't really like it- I didn't like the idea of an immature narrator like Holden. I read it again, and when I was more mature and could look at it without getting involved with it, I realized how much I was like Holden. There are some books that capture a generation, that capture an emotion- this isn't one of those books for me. But yet, this book captures me altogether- rather than capturing a global emotion, he captures Holden, and in turn, captures me. (It makes perfect sense in my mind, at least.) I've even written songs including ideas from the book: "It's true, we can't be catchers in the rye/Children must see the writing on the wall
But asked when innocence is lost, reply/that innocence is never lost at all" I've seen movie characters named Holden (no doubt inspired by the book)- Mel Gibson was addicted to the book in "Conspiracy Theory"- and people have been killed (notedly John Lennon) by avid book readers. This book is as much a part of America as apple pie, mom, and Charles Manson- but yet is only a description of one boy getting kicked out of school and struggling to grow up. Yet it is more than that- it is the trials and tribulations of a boy trying to get through childhood in that transition stage. When he still wants to hold on to ideals, but when reality is seeping in. I identify with Holden, as do so many others- it's simply amazing.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: The funniest, smartest, most enjoyable book I have ever read. Haven't we all felt like Holden at one time or another? I still laugh every time I read it, which has been many times since it was assigned to me in 11th grade.
Rating:
Summary: A pivot for life, and entertainment for an evening.
Review: The funny thing is that first read Catcher in the Rye as a Mormon Missionary in Virginia. Due to an illness I was boxed up in an apartment in a different country, a different world, alone, nineteen, and not quite sure what I was doing. The bottled angst of being surrounded, and unconsciencely annoyed, by so many 'phonies' really escaped through the pains and misadventure of Holden. I found the book a fresh breathe of Honesty. It is amazing in Holden's outlook and now, all these years later after getting the book again, I realize how a resolve to become honestly (legitimately) a catcher in the rye -- that is, a good and caring person -- has guided me. I enjoyed it then and now I do again. The odd and strange twists and critics of the world make you laugh, and then make you think - for a long time. The book is a great introduction to a new and tough way to realize how someone else worried about zits and sex and life in crazy dog-days of post-pubesence. The best way to spend Six dollars.
Rating: 
Summary: Everyboy's talkin' at a frozen fish
Review: The great irony of The Catcher in the Rye isn't that Holden is a hypocrite (which he is), it's that Salinger, using Holden as his voice, stresses the phoniness of his language -- "old so-and-so," "and all," "knocks me out," "kills me," "gave me a bang," etc. -- as much as, say, Laurence Olivier hams his way through "Hamlet." It's like Salinger is admitting his own phoniness through a guy who hates phonies, who himself has moments of phoniness. That's the joke. And it's funny. Yeah, it's cute to watch Holden give all those young kids his tips, since he's as clueless as they come about the world around him; or watch Holden admit, just a tad, when he's wrong. He's tremendously likeable to us (even if he must come off as a jerk to everyone in the book not privy to our insider information) because we see all his insecurities; it certainly has a therapeutic effect on the teenage mind that thinks he's all alone in the world, and Salinger mentions this near the end of the novel, of course. You could hardly say the book is profound in ideas -- the closest it comes is that bit about the suitcases -- but it is an important book, obviously, and a good one because, even if we're not in Holden's economic situation (and even if we're not growing up in the '40s and '50s), nearly everything he says stays relevant. (Well, maybe not the part about the frozen fish, but doesn't every teenage brain imagine leaving everyone behind and starting life anew?) All that's changed is the degree of cursing. (What's written on the wall that shocks Holden into anger is kinda funny, seen from today's perspective.) I haven't read Salinger's other stuff so I can't compare, but it strikes me as far too easy to criticize this book for its thin vocabulary -- Salinger lays it on so thick as to become comical and has Holden himself mention it once or twice, for chrissakes. One thing most of us are interested in when we read a novel or watch a movie (not Holden on the latter, I realize, though I wonder what he'd think about Brando in a few years) is to be planted in some other world. Here, the world is sparsely described to us, but it's neat to put yourself -- as I did -- in the shoes of someone of the time. Where words like "flit" were used; or where Holden says "colored" people, which is indicative of the times, and then goes and overcompensates by telling us a white musician could never be as good as a black one because she'd made a song too cute. I get a bit of a thrill when I read stuff like that, a little ahead of its time. Holden even has a reasonably modern view of "flits" for someone his age. (Maybe all that time around the "gorgeous" Stradlater influenced him...) I can't say the book changed my life, but I can see why it would make countless readers wish they could call up Salinger up on the phone whenever they felt like it.
Rating:
Summary: The Only Book I Have Ever Enjoyed
Review: The great thing about "The Catcher In The Rye" is it's total lack of metaphors, boring literary device, and hidden meanings. Salinger leaves nothing to interperation, and presents his story of an aggrevated teenager, melancholy and cynical, in a black and white, analylitical fashion. By far the best book I have ever read, it's the only book I ever enjoyed. It's neither too long nor too short, hard to follow or monotonous, serious or comical. Instead, it is a portrait of the perfect novel, cutting through the sugar-coating and "beauty of literature" and getting right to the story and the point: that everything is nothing, and NOTHING is not worth wasting your life on.
Rating:
Summary: Orinigal and oxymoronic
Review: The great thing about this book is it's a legacy. J.D.Salinger was a mystery.His creation was a groundbreaker. I read and re-read this book several times. I still remembered this first time I was still in my teen,It came like a breath of fresh air. Never before I'd read such unique character,Holden Caulfield. Salinger's narrative style was charismatic,bewitching and truly remarkable. Now I'm in my late-twenties I still find it amazing each time I'll read it..I see things from a different level or perceptive.I'm sure in the years to come, at different stops of my life,my views may vary but I will certainly read it for a long time, this book will withstand the test. This book was about Holden,17. Salinger took readers to see and experience a few days of Holden's life through Holden's preceptive. Holden's going through a phase which was realistic and compelling. Showing the true meaning of life and psychological reality of people. What is human nature? Who's truthful and who's a phony? This book filled with ironies and highly debatable social and physiological issues. It also drawn a foggy line between maddness and genius. One of the best contribution the Literature and Life.
Rating:
Summary: Groundbreaker
Review: The great thing about this book is it's a legacy. J.D.Salinger was a mystery.His creation was a groundbreaker. I read and re-read this book several times. I still remembered this first time I was still in my teen,It came like a breath of fresh air. Never before I'd read such unique character,Holden Caulfield. Salinger's narrative style was charismatic,bewitching and truly remarkable. Now I'm in my late-twenties I still find it amazing each time I'll read it..I see things from a different level or perceptive.I'm sure in the years to come, at different stops of my life,my views may vary but I will certainly read it for a long time, this book will withstand the test. This book was about Holden,17. Salinger took readers to see and experience a few days of Holden's life through Holden's preceptive. Holden's going through a phase which was realistic and compelling. Showing the true meaning of life and psychological reality of people. What is human nature? Who's truthful and who's a phony? This book filled with ironies and highly debatable social and physiological issues. It also drawn a foggy line between madness and genius. One of the best contribution the Literature and Life.
Rating:
Summary: The J.D. Salinger classic
Review: The greatest book ever written.If you have never read this book do so, you will not regret it. The book revolves around Holden Caulfield and his contempt for "phonies", and life in general.The book is brilliantly written and really grabs your attention, the events in the book seem almost to real to have not happened.
Rating:
Summary: Essential reading for teenagers
Review: The idea of a book's plot being centered around just three days of the main character's life has always been something that intrigues audiences. Catcher In The Rye is no different, and upon starting this book, I was unable to keep my nose out of it for days. It's hard to say why, but I think it's the combination of the book's content being timeless, relatable, and original. Holden, a typical teenage boy living in the Northeast, finds himself being kicked out of Pencey (his boarding school) on account of his less-than-impressive grades. He leaves prior to that, however, presumably to escape the dreary school life that seems to have been bothering for quite some time. He decides to go home, but not without encountering two days in the Big Apple. The actual text, however, is much like a live diary of Holden's thoughts as he encounters various people and flashbacks of his foggy past. Of course, the theme sounds a little drab on paper, but Salinger's way of conveying this young character with an impressive wit and intelligence makes the reader addicted to the story. It's so real and timeless that you can often find yourself forgetting that you're reading a book that was written 50-plus years ago. Many of the characters don't stick around longer than a few chapters in the book, but each and every one of them reveals so much of their personality despite the fact that Holden is the only character that sticks around until the end of the book. It's Salinger's way of making things seem so authentic that makes this book so brilliant. It's easy why to see this book is such a staple in American literature; it's trendy, it's classic, and it doesn't waste time giving the reader too much to analyze. It's moving literature without the dreary focus on making EVERYTHING have an underlying meaning (which is the reason why so many teenagers don't enjoy reading today). It goes back to what books are meant to do; enlighten, inspire, and entertain.
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