People we hate become lovable when we understand them. I think that should be why we read literature.

I love how the book can be so extreme in its range of emotions, like in making you laugh out loud at Holden's sense of humour but also feel incredibly sad for how broken this poor boy is

Apparently he IS talking to a mental health professional throughout the story. It is said that he's narrating this story in the form of a long flashback from within a psychiatric institution/sanitorium. It's alluded to in the final chapter, in lines such as "when I get out of here" and "when I got sick". I've read the book twice and I didn't realise until after I finished it for the second time, and I read it somewhere else.

The Catcher in the Rye is really an adult book masquerading as a young adult read. The more you "come of age" the harder it hits.

The "Everyone but Allie." Line got to me

It's great when a book doesn't change but you change between readings. I had the same experience with Jane Eyre; hated it in high school, but now really appreciate the bravery and boldness of it as a parent and husband.

"These birds are very chatty...Oh My Goodness!" I bet she didn't realize she said that phrase. LOL You are so wholesome!

And you should do more specific book reviews, because you make classics seem super interesting(and they are) and your love for books is contagious! It might encourage more readers to approach to classics!

I was listening to your reading of Holden's feelings at his brother's death and I could feel so identified with it... I lost my dear sister last year and there are feelings you can't express because they can't be put into words. I am no longer a teenager, but I do understand Holden so much.

With Holden being "The Catcher in the rye" I always interpreted his "catching children" as him wanting to prevent them from growing up so they can preserve their innocence and avoid the corruption of adulthood.

Finally got around to reading it but this book broke my heart wow. I love unreliable narrators, and Holden is clearly struggling with a lot of unprocessed trauma and grief, and and you need to read between the lines, behind the spite and posturing, to find out how he really feels

Salinger's sharp humor isn't talked about enough. All his books are painfully hilarious, even with all the sorrow laying out in between. His short stories, A Perfect Day For Bananafish in particular, are great examples of that

I love The Catcher In The Rye so much! Read it when I was 16, in my 20s, and now late 30s. It was the first book that made me laugh out loud. Everytime someone tells me they hate it I pick it up and randomly read a few pages and remember how great it is. You get it or you don't. I will say now that I have kids it is very sad how his parents and adults in his life fail him. He clearly needed help. I love that he really only wanted to be with his little sister, probably because kids tell the truth and everyone else in his life was a big phoney bastard. Your vidoes are great! I am reading War and Peace now because of you and Emmie. Thank you! ❤

I LOOOVEEE THIS BOOK REVIEW! The way you fleshed out the parts you liked, your observations, your understanding of it is incredible! I hope you’ll do more of this, Carolyn. I mean, this kind of book reviews. You shine the brightest whenever you flesh out/analyze thoroughly the books you read. ☺️❤️

I've been reading it every year for almost 10 years now hahah glad you liked it this time :)

I absolutely love The Catcher in the Rye! It's a masterpiece that resonates deeply with teenagers who relate to its themes and raw emotions. Also, I can't tell you how many times my friends at school told me that this book sparked their lifelong passion for literature. For the more mature audiences, it will provide a window into the hardships of coming out of age - a journey many of us will have forgotten by the age of 35 or so. Personally, I anticipate revisiting Holden Caulfield in twenty years to gain a better understanding of my own children.

I found a 20 year old copy of this (with the carousel horse) at the thrift store, bought it for $2. I started reading it and couldn't put it down, turned the last pages heart-broken, and hugged the book -- to say goodbye, and a hug for Holden.

The bits you read moved me. So maybe it is time for a re-read. The grief he feels about the death of his brother, the scene at the cemetery, all masterfully portrayed. I also didn’t remember Holden being so funny. Like you said, a great balance of humor and sorrow.

I read this book about a year ago and found it charming. It really felt like I was in the mind of an angsty teen and it was a reminder of just how annoying it was growing up at ages 15-17. You weren’t a child, you weren’t an adult, and everything seemed arbitrary…. As I’ve grown, it was easy to forget those feelings and judge the new batch of teens. This is why I love literature - you are confronted with so many ideas and emotions that you may not in everyday life which can make you a more thoughtful person.

Now reread Frankenstein 😂

Hi Carolyn! Firstly, I’m so glad you ended up liking Catcher in the Rye. Same story, first time I read I detested it, but I reread it when I became the same age as Holden and ended up appreciating and relating to Holden quite a bit. Because I ended up really liking the novel, I wanted to say that I learned an interpretation of the ending, with him saying he wanted to “catch” kids falling from a cliff, was to save these children from becoming these shallow or “phony” connections that Holden had to encounter in New York. He wants them to create REAL human connection, something that Holden or the people he met with lacks. I remember reading that analysis and feeling so heavy after. Salinger’s just remarkable in being able to capture the complications of grief, loneliness, and the difficulties in all kinds of human relationships.

Read this book for the first time when I was 16. And loved it with all my heart! Reread it when I was about 24 and loved it with all my heart again:) (by the way, I love David Copperfield as well:)

I've been a Beatles fan for half of my life (I'm 26 now) and I've always avoided The Catcher In The Rye because of John Lennon's murderer, who said that book "inspired" him... Now I'm old and mature enough to understand the fault was not on the book, but my teen, obsessed beatlemaniac self felt really repulsed by it. I'm really excited to read it now! (I know, my teen self was stupid, but don't be rude, please!)

The first time I read it I gave up somewhere around the half-way mark. When I re-read it and read the Phoebe chapter, it all clicked, then the ending, that just killed me. it really did. I think, at the end, after he sees Phoebe dragging her crazy suitcase like a madman and wanting to run away alongside him, he finally understands his parents and his teachers concern for him because he's confronted with the reality he has no choice but to be the "adult" and keep Phoebe from making the same mistakes he's made, to be the Catcher In The Rye. He literally grows up in front of you. It's a lot more complex than that too, I think he also realizes he has to move on from Allie's passing.

I read this book for the first time in the original when I was 21 or 22 (English is not my first language) and absolutely loved it, how it's written, the whole style of it)))) it's like your best friend is speaking to you, for me it has this "I'm home" feeling, which comforts me, and when I have hard times in life, I re-read some parts of it. I also totally love the ending and Holden's attitude to his little sister which is pretty moving

aaaah finally!! you've put into words (and a very calming and entertaining video) the reasons why i love this book! it's so raw and bittersweet and human. thanks for this, carolyn

It always sorta shocks me that this is one of the more disliked classics for a lot of new readers. I can understand it might not resonate with people but I think Holden is a very sympathetic character when you engage with him. Maybe he just makes a really bad first impression.

Finished the book today for the first time and found this video. I’m 16 and I will definitely come back to this video when I’m 26. Your voice is so nice! You should narrate audiobooks 😊

It feels as if your younger brother is telling you his life story🩵

Great book summary! Thank you! I’m planning on revisiting it again soon & this video has me super excited for it 😊

I loved watching you rediscover this book. I’ve always loved that Holden is one of the most “real” characters in literature. That said, you’ve made me nervous because this was one of my favorite books in high school and I haven’t read I since. What if I go in the opposite direction!

So interesting, your change in perspective! What are your ideas about what in you led to disliking the book and character then at age 16 versus loving them now at this time of your life? Are there specific developmental changes or life experiences or perspectives that underlie this shift? And are there other disliked books you're now inspired to revisit, eg Frankenstein?

I am interested in the Catcher in the Rye. The opening reminded me of the Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Speaking of which, I think Great Expectations would pair quite nicely with The Outsiders if you read them together. The outsiders mentions Great Expectations. They both feature a young male protagonist dealing with class differences and crime in some way.

i read the catcher in the rye for the first time at 17 and i thought it was fine, didn't love it but also didn't hate it, re-read it at 25 and absolutely loved it!! it's now one of my favorites for sure

So glad you love The Catcher in the Rye now! Very charming your editions. 😍

I would honestly watch another 30 minutes of you gushing over Catcher in the Rye! I'm so happy you love it now too, because it's such a special story. I read it for the first time at 14 in my native language, then reread many times, and I love it even more now at 31.

Thank you for convincing me to read this book! I love your channel so so much 🤎

I read The Catcher In The Rye a few years ago and as I was reading it I got the feeling that maybe I wasn’t ready for that book yet. I ended up not loving it but ever since I’ve had the desire to re-read it at some point.

This whole video is amazing,reminded me of how much i love catcher in the rye

Thank you and happy writing!!!

Wow!! I read it three years ago and I didn't remember as such a sad book. Now, I will have to read it again!! 💜

Loved this, i read it for the first time 3 years ago when i was in my 30's. I love classics. ❤📚

Hahaha 😂. So I purposely waited to watch this until after I was done with Catcher and the live show. Now I'm laughing because you counted the "goddam"s too!

Thank you for explaining the book. It was so foreign to me because I never read it and high school I read or George Orwell 1984 and the Hiding Place.

Bookmarking this video to watch after the weekend. I just started the book yesterday 😂

11:24 ok. I’m old. Over my many years I have reread many book I originally read when I was much younger including The Catcher in the Rye. In most instances, I’ve appreciated the books even more because I could put my years of experience into the book. I absolutely loved Moby Dick when I was older. And also many other classics are richer and fuller with more life experiences.

I was a melancholy child so I liked it, but happy classmates hated it.

It’s different hearing you read it than when I read it. You read it so elegantly and I read it with this bitterness towards the world and with a slight accent lol

Hi Carolyn. I am 39, I like you, read this book in high school. I read it in 10th grade, and absolutely hated it. I thought that Holden Caulfield was just a huge winer back, then . Ha ha ha Anyone who asked me about Catcher as an adult bookseller would get a bit of an eye roll. This video is making me want to reread Catcher to see if I feel the same now. Loved this video!

The book group that I am facilitating is reading this book for review. I've read it many times. The Catcher in the Rye is definitely a book I love and could read again and again. Thank you for your review. I will pass it on to the rest of the people in my group the day before we meet next week.

I love love J.D.Salinger. I now want to reread--- Yes, good idea! So happy you like now! ( btw, am reading Anna Karenina 😊)(oh, see, Holden repeats too, like Tolstoy does😅)

I also read the Catcher in the rye at 16 bscause I was obsessed with The perks of being a wallflower (I'm from Argentina so here it isn't mandatory read) and h a t e d it, but now you made me want to re read it, it sounds soooo relatable

32:23 "the book stays the same but its you thats different" wow

So what is your most disliked book at this point? And are you going to reread that one as well? ^^ I have read The Catcher in the Rye last year. For some reason the scenes in the back of the bar, his dirty roommate and I don't know something on a square where he had all kind of appointments stayed with me. Because I am a relatively new reader(I never read as a young adult or earlier). My mind doesn't really create a world. But with this book I could really imagine it. So for me it was a great experience. Also I like Holden!

So glad you reviewed and now you have double copies. I read it every year.

You have convinced me to read this bool ❤

Such a beautiful heartfelt review. Thank you!❤

I also hated this book but now you have made me want to re-read it, along with all the other books that I hated in high school!. I hadn't even understood the part about him wanting to save the kids in the rye field because he couldn't save his brother, I had thought that he had wanted to save them from "going over the edge" mentally and becoming like him. 🤯😄😄

I totally loved it in high school. I’m a little scared to re-read it-afraid I won’t love it as much.

Catcher and the rye is one of the books on my list that I’ve been putting off but really wanna read. But on the topic of hating books one of the few books I hated that I read in high school was Ethan Frome. It was one of those books I had to force myself to read and for as short as the book was was one of the longest reads for me and I hated every second of it. I wanna know if anyone else had that same experience

I started to read this book last year but i was not liking it, so i stoped. But now, well, you convinced me to give it another chance 😅 Here in Brazil we have an edition with the same cover that you show in the end of the video 🧡

I loved Catcher in the Rye although I can see why its hard for some to enjoy.

Loved this :-) i finally read Catcher last year (I'm in my 30s) and it made total sense to me that a lot of people have negative feelings about it from school. I'm so glad I didnt read it then.

Read other Salinger stuff too. "Nine Stories", "Franny and Zooey"...it's also really good. And in a completely different voice than Holden's..

I read it at different stages of my life and each time the book made me feel different emotions. That’s why it’s great

I am on a similar journey, I hated the Catcher in the Rye when I read it at 18, now at 58 I am rereading it and to my surprise I really like it.... it is interesting how our tastes evolve as readers....

I'm 15, read the book from december of last year to last july. At first, i didn't like it much, it seemed boring and didn't interest me AT ALL. It took me this long cause i read it everytime i took the train for Paris, and as time passed, i started liking Holden. It was like knowing him over time, i don't remember how much time passed in the book but I lived it, i felt close to Holden and every word finally made sense, finally was worth something. No matter how unlikable he sounded, somehow you still enjoyed his thoughts. As the book went, i even related to him, maybe cause we're around the same age and he has that arrogant "i'm not like those phonies" attitude you can find in yourself as a teen. It might not be my favourite book but it is definitely one of my favourite characters. I can't even express how it made me feel. I definitely understand many people hating the book since you have to read it for school but as a french boy, it was nothing but pleasure. It did take me sweat and tears at first. Rereading it, I don't even understand why. Also i'll keep wondering where the ducks go during winter.

maybe a call for a re-read of this one...also was not a fan of it when i had to read as apart of our curriculum sophomore year of high school, especially as it was kind of posed as if we were "meant to love it". thank you for the review, though! will hopefully go back to catcher in the rye and adore it in a similar way to you!

Beautiful review!

I read this book last summer when I was visiting New York. I honesty think that Holden is one of the funniest characters I've ever read. I mean, I get why people can dislike him very much, but he gave me really good laughs!

So why did you hate it the first time?

I recommend that you read the short stories from jd Salinger. Then you understand more about Holden's life story and his traumas about his older brother

I read "The Catcher in the Rye" when i was 15 and i didn't like it at all, but i read translated version into russian (I'm from Russia). After your video i wanna (try) reread this book in original, because it feels very different. Thank you for review!

I read this book for the first time in January and I really didnt like it. Hearing this review makes me think I need to read it again with a different mindset. I read it just because it was one of the "classics" to read and I wanted to just tick it off the list. He definitely annoyed me from the beginning and I kept thinking this character is so childish. Then I realized where he was telling his story from and it annoyed me even more lol. You've inspired me to re-read it. Thank you.

I loved The Catcher in the Rye in high school but I do think English class settings can make it really hard to FULLY enjoy books especially reading them for the first time because I HATED reading The Great Gatsby in school and thought it was the stupidest book ever and I think it has a lot to do with the way that you need to keep starting and stopping for class assignments and you can’t just immerse yourself into a story and experience it and relate to it for yourself

One of my most hated book is Bahnwärter Thiel. I believe even in the English version it has the original name. I had to read it in my history class. Every other classic book I adored or liked reading. I never really had an issue with reading in school.

Just to know, but i'm 13 and i would like to read it, i could appreacite it at my age?

The catcher in the rye is my favorite classic 🥺🥺 ❤

❤Love it! ❤Thanks4sharing!

I too really disliked Holden, and Catcher in the Rye, when I first read it at 19 - you’ve inspired me to reread this!

Lovely interpretation. I agree.

i first read this book when i was 9 but then we did reading with our TA's and then i got in mad trouble when i asked what a wh was

I know this will sound like people come up with anything. When I was a child I would throw tantrums at school, and Sunday school. Usually throwing and breaking everything as a revolt against my on off relationship with my parents, which I was staying with a babysitter who favored me over the other children at the time. I was only 7-10 years old was time period and I would go along with an assumption the psychiatrist had that I would 'black out' and comment these 'tantrums'. I agreed with him in thinking I was leading on the lie for attention I guess I was young and naive. It was a good way to get out of school since they placed me in ese classes simply for displinary reasons, I was not their for learning difficulties per say.I was diagnosed with a rare type of 'seizure with rage spikes'. I was sent to a brain monitoring facility where they performed ekgs on my brain and hooked wires to me for whole weekends at the time and I remember while I was there I was put into a room and an antagonist experiment similar to the one conducted on the college student in that one mkultra movie I forget the scene was where his teacher brings him into a theater room and makes him watch heinous images over and over trying to trigger his symptoms. Anyways I am 34 years old now and I just read the 1st chapter of 'Catcher in the rye' being inspired to buy the book after watching Mel Gibson/Julia Roberts movie "Conspiracy Theory". After reading 1st chapter I fell asleep and instantly not in my REM sleep cycle fell into a horrible nightmare hypnosis where a man I couldn't face had a baby carriage and the baby would come out and shapeshift Into some sort of demon and it was happening over and over in slightly different scenes, it was as if he was coming at me to possess me. Never had anything like this occured since When I was taking riddilen as a young child maybe 6 I had a series of horrific nightmares over two week period which stopped after I was taken off that medication. Point being maybe there is more to the story than people think. I put the book up after chapter one and refuse to read anymore of it. First novel I have tried to read in awhile I typically stay reading ancient Greek/Roman, non-fiction, and politically relevant books. I don't regard myself as easily hypnotizable but maybe I was partially hypnotized into being a sleeper cell but they didn't complete process...this is definitely a true story I am not insane. It was just a nightmare in any case maybe brought on about the hype of the book, but I don't really think so. The way it hit me was so perfect, and the epiphany afterwards so vivid. I understood the mind of a lunatic before I was able to come back to my senses.

Do y'all use Discord for game of tomes discussions?

I’ve reread some classics I initially was too young to digest! But the only book I remember from school I really did not enjoy in the least, was Huckleberry Finn. I was going through a lot at the time… It was the one book I didn’t read and I had a panic attack in the hallway over the test haha But I tried rereading it last year, over ten years since high school, and still I do not like it. The writing is not for me.

Onward to Franny and Zooey!!! 😄

I loved this book and will read it many more times in my life. I never read it as a teen, but I would say that perhaps the humor and language Holden uses can throw a reader off from the very serious and sad things he talks about. In that case I can see why some people don't like the book. But if you pay attention, it is heartbreaking, and Holden is loveable.

I also read this book 8 years ago, when I was around 14 or 15 years old. I just remembered how I thought Holden was annoying and entitled but I couldn't believe how much my opinion has changed now that I've read it for the book club!

I also hated this book when I read it for the first time... maybe it is also time for me o reread it

I think it was great that you took a different approach to Holden as a character, most reviews I’ve seen is just people complaining about how Holden is full of himself and is annoying. It’s nice to see someone realizing that he behaves this way because he hasn’t healed from the Loss oh is brother Allie. I think his depression got worse by seeing that schoolmate of his that jumped of the window, seeing a bloody body on the ground may traumatize anyone. Also can we talk about how creepy Mr. Antolini was?

I have not read this book since High School. Now at 60 the book seems dated and felt the mentality of people living in the 1940's. Todays standard are different and thzts why it felt dated. I was able to understand and it reminded me of my own past growing up in New York City. Thank you for sharing about this book. I do not know why they want to ban the book today. I went to private school run by Benedictines. We were required to read this book. Today I hear that they want to ban it in the South. That is why I decided to get a copy and read again. I am not upset or offended.

8:16 This is what u here for

Currently,I'm reading the catcher in the rye (burmese version) wrriten by one of the most famous novelists in Myanmar❤✨

CarolynMarieReads ....Thanks Much !.......

The Catcher in the Rye is a book one should read at least twice in their life...second read would definitely stir your thoughts and make you change your perspective on Holden

Would love to see a "writing vlog" if you're still interested in making one 💚

i was really surprised how much i enjoyed this book and couldnt believe so many people despised holden

8:25 You ARE okay! :)

I just finished _David Copperfield._ The first half is a masterpiece, thoroughly. As we proceed the book turns episodic, and it seems evident to me that Dickens didn't want to leave it, he loved this work so much. As a result, for this reader, it goes on for too long. It is good, but the second half dwindles in interest. I suppose if I were in the habit of awarding stars I would give it 3.5 to 4 stars.

I haven't read this since high school and I also hated it. i need to revisit it now as an adult!