Recommendations from our site
“This is the only book I read when I was a young adult. I believed it was cursed for me—it was the book I read directly before I had a breakdown. I thought that somehow reading the book had triggered my breakdown. I found Holden when I felt exactly the same as he did. When he was with his sister he wanted to be a child, but he was being thrust into this adult world. And he didn’t want to be. And that’s where so much of my anxiety came from too. I remember reading it. I’ve still got the same copy that I had then and there are little paragraphs and sentences that I’d ringed. With Holden I discovered that there were other people that felt the way I did. When I found out that it had been written so long ago, I found something comforting about that. Before I read this book, it felt to me, that I was alone and going through something unique and unknown. But apparently others, even in the far past had had the same experience. So I took from it that this was a rite of passage—this time was difficult for most people. It was a transformative book for me. And I love it for that. It explained things for me at a time when I couldn’t have explained them myself.” Read more...
The best books on Teenage Mental Health
Rae Earl, Memoirist
“I’m drawn mostly to books about boys of that age, and I think The Catcher in the Rye is unsurpassed. What I love about it is just how carefree this boy is about life. “ Read more...
The best books on Boyhood and Growing Up
Chigozie Obioma, Literary Scholar
“It was such a relief from the other books I was reading at the time, which all had a quality of homework to them.” Read more...
Woody Allen on The Books that Inspired Him
Woody Allen, Film Director
“Catcher in the Rye injected a fresh idiom into American literature. This happened several times in our literary history. Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn and Ernest Hemingwayin The Sun Also Rises did the same – they brought the contemporary spoken language into literature. When Salinger invented Holden Caulfield he gave his voice such freshness and vibrancy. Salinger also almost invented the concept of teenage angst – Salinger’s was the first voice of the youthquake that transformed our society in the 50s, 60s and 70s.” Read more...
Jay McInerney, Novelist
