🌟🌟🌟🌟⭐(4/5) " 'You ought to go to a boy's school sometime... It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddamn Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddamn cliques...' 'Now, listen,' old Sally said. 'Lots of boys get more out of school than that.' 'I agree! I agree they do, some of them! But that's all I get out of it. See?' " I've tried to read A Catcher In The Rye many times and on each occasion I was too bored within the first several pages to go on reading. Ironic that, after having gone through my own journey of self-discovery, I am finally able to comprehend American literature's most notorious coming-of-age story. I give this book five stars for voice--the main character can nearly be heard speaking this book to you as a conversation, and he is so personable that within thirty pages I felt that I had perhaps met Holden Caulfield before(and been annoyed and enchanted with him in turns). Through the interactions Holden shares with the book's many side characters, each of which holds the spotlight only once before disappearing from the narrative, we become more familiar with Holden's psychology than he is. There are deeply insightful moments delivered to us by the reveries of the gifted mind of the youthful narrator; there are moments of such raw humanity which the narrator combats with a comic's tongue that leave the reader laughing out loud. Some may see the main character as a disturbed youth, alienated by his unwillingness to conform. I see his perspective as the perfect counterpoint to the hypocrisy one sees when one looks past the niceties of politeness and modern life, provided by a unique mind that is only partway on its path. Special thanks to @twas_brillig11 for the recommendation to read this book. It took me 6 years, but I finally did it. #bookstagram #booksireadin2018 #readinglist2018 #bookrecommendation #JDSalinger #theCatcherintheRye #americanliterature #comingofage #_bookshelf2018_ (at Portland, Oregon)