The Catcher in the Rye

This book doesn't need my review but yet, here I am ;-) I read this book this year, when I was 37, so I may not have been the target audience for it. In short, a first person teenage narrator tells the events in his life just prior to his decision to run away from his boarding school and his wandering around NYC for a few days. During this time he runs into different situations that allow him to explain how he sees the world in a stream-of-conciousness type of narration and, in some way, try to find some kind of purpose to his life. To anyone who has watched any independent movies from the 60's, it has that kind of vibe of someone just wandering around without any purpose, yet it was published between 1945 and 1951, which makes it quite original for its time. I think some aspects of the teen personality are well depicted: the impression that you already know the world and you're already disappointed in it, the very strong opinions on random subjects that aren't really backed up by any actual experience of it (like his hate for Hollywood), yet the need to do as his peers (e.g. he goes several times to the cinema nevertheless), which makes him feel like crap. The run away ideas are also a common teenage trope, as it is the way he doesn't really understand girls and he wants to do things "like an adult" but he's still afraid of the consequences, so it's always easier to day-dream about running away. I recognize the originality and point of the book, yet I didn't really enjoyed reading it. - The character is both literaly and figuratively lost, and so was I: I think it's very difficult to actually build a whole story about someone wandering around and I've never been able to enjoy that kind of storytelling. - Even though I noticed the moment when the title is explained in the book, I didn't understand it. This was the most significant point of the book and I had to search for an explanation somewhere else to get it, which makes me feel like an idiot for not understanding it on my own... - The "young adult language" may have been revolutionary then, but it's obviously outdated. Everything felt a bit outdated, to be honest, and not in a nice way. - Finally, it's just that I found the character quite annoying... like a teenager... To sum up, I think this book is fine but, for me, it wouldn't qualify as a universal must-read.