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| The Catcher in the Rye | 
 enlarge | Author: J. Salinger
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy Used: £2.23
You Save: £6.76 (75%)
New (28) from £3.48
Avg. Customer Rating:  246 reviews
Sales Rank: 372
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised edition
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.6
ISBN: 014023750X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140237504
ASIN: 014023750X
Publication Date: August 4, 1994
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 my favourite book as a teenager November 3, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read and re-read Catcher in the Rye as a teenager and I thought I actually was Holden Caulfield I'm sure. I remember being so amazed because I thought like him or he thought like me. I've read it again as an adult and still love it but was disturbed to realise that Holden is quite unhinged; worryingly I hadn't realised that when I was young!!! which says quite a lot about me I'm afraid.
Teenage classic and an all-time fave October 25, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I love this book, but I think maybe you have to read it at the right age - ie Holden's age, when you believe no-one understands you or takes you seriously, and everyone but you is "phoney"! I read it with my 20-something book group a couple of years ago, and there was a definite split between those who'd read it in our teens (coming back to an old friend, finding it even funnier as we picked up on jokes we missed first time around) and those who were seeing it for the first time (whiney adolescent speaking in dated slang). Personally, it's still one of my favourite books - the language may have dated but Holden Caulfield's teenage angst certainly hasn't.
The Best October 16, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Probably one of the most enjoyable, funny and yet sad books I have ever read. Great read - classic!
 Absolutely pitiful... October 16, 2007
8 out of 28 found this review helpful
Every once in a while, you read a so-called classic and find it fabulous. And then, there's this book.
Rarely have I read such a poorly-worded, myopic, feeble and pointless book as this. Its' only bright spot is that it is mercifully short.
Occasionally, a really gifted writer can get away with a plot-free novel, because the characterisation is so powerful, and the insights so sharp. This gets nowhere near. Holden Caulfield is an empty, empty-headed, shallow, stupid, boring, repetitive, selfish little brat. At what point are we supposed to feel he is us, or speaking for us? Not having been a spoiled public schoolboy annoying my contemporaries, I find absolutely nothing in this book that resonates with my own life at any point.
Since I wouldn't spend two minutes in the company of this mawkish, self-absorbed little twerp, I didn't relish spending an entire book following him around, with nothing happening. There is no insight here, no important truths to tell, no searing message about young minds. If you asked an ignorant twelve-year-old to keep a diary, it would still be more entertaining and powerful than this.
Salinger doesn't actually have anything to say. In fact, it appears that he doesn't even try. No wonder he's not written another book. He should be too ashamed of this effort to go near the keyboard. How on earth did this get to be an influential book? If you want gritty realism, try Last Exit to Brooklyn.
This book is lamentable, and I bemoan my luck that I can't get the time back that I wasted on this novel.
If you're Holden out . . . October 10, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
and waiting for something better to come along, don't. This is a great book. But, you have to view it from when it was written and how it has changed literature since it first came out. So many have gone into the plot and narration that it seems pointless to do so now. What really matters is the fact that this was considered so "new" when it arrived on the scene in 1950s America. So many authors owe a debt of gratitude and feedom to Salinger: Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, David Sedaris, just to name a few. Salinger freed up the canon, making their sort of books possible. I've read three really good books lately, and all were completely different in scope and themes. First was "To Kill A Mockingbird" which most have read. Second was "Inner Voices, Inner Views" which is a fascinating look at how writers write and what they're thinking, and third was the novel "The Road" which was an Oprah pick. All three went in opposite directions but were enjoyable.
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