As a whole, I thought The Catcher in the Rye was a great book. There were some parts that were excellent and some that were not so good, but it never reached the level of terrible. I was compelled by the story of Holden Caulfield to stay up late reading on a school night, which is something I do only very occasionally for the good books.
These books, Catcher in the Rye especially, have changed how I think about some things. I find myself calling people phonies all the time now. I must have picked that up from Holden in Catcher in the Rye. I also get a lot more of the references to these books in other aspects of today's culture.
This summer was actually the first time that I enjoyed reading the books we were supposed to read. I thought Fahrenheit 451 and Catcher in the Rye were both very good books. The Old Man and the Sea and Grapes of Wrath I could have done without, but they were both better than I was expecting them to be.
Not that I have anything against the English department, but I really don't see why we have to read those specific books. There are plenty of other books out there that have the same general theme to them that we could have picked from instead.
This is a completely different topic, but I thought it was weird that in the most recent presidential assassinations, the killers have had a copy of Catcher in the Rye with them. I had never heard that before. It influenced them that much. Even if it didn't, and it was just a huge coincidence, it's still impressive. That's my biggest goal in life: to write something that will have influence over people. Maybe not quite in the way I described earlier, but influential. I want to write something like these books- a classic that will live forever, but one that's actually good.
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