Ben Folds is best served live.

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

In this book we follow Holden, a teenager who has just been expelled from (another) school. Afraid of having to go home early, Holden whittles away the time in New York. He gets drunk, he smokes a lot, he hires a prostitute - you know, the kinds of things normal teenagers do.

This review is quite brief because I found this book quite disappointing. It’s hard to relate to a main character who does so many stupid things, who drifts through life and who doesn’t seem to make any kind of progress or learn from anything he experiences. If there was a point to this book I must’ve missed it - the ability of Holden to get easily side-tracked into little whinges to me was pointless and annoying because it’s as if the majority of the book is him complaining about other people.

Maybe there’s 65 million people that disagree with me but I’d suggest people avoid this one.