Don’t recall reading Catcher in the Rye in high school. Then again, I might have read the Cliff Notes.
Movie was boring.
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I’m pretty sure they never made a movie
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I stand corrected. It was a movie about J.D. Salinger, Coming through the Rye.
Thanks.
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I intensely hated that book. So much so that I wrote a book review. Here’s an excerpt:
I took on Wuthering Heights for the same reason one takes on reading Moby Dick and Crime and Punishment, and climbing Mount Everest, and sailing the Pacific Ocean, and swimming from Florida to Cuba, and . . . well, you get the idea. Because it’s a challenge. And it’s a classic. As Mark Twain would say, Wuthering Heights is a book which “people praise and don’t read.”
The main character, Heathcliff, is a thoroughly despicable character with no redeeming qualities whatsoever who never gets his comeuppance. Chances are you won’t relish the conclusion.
Spoiler alert: The main character dies at the end. Nobody mourns him, and the rest of the characters aren’t manifestly improved. In a nutshell, the loathsome Heathcliff has a dalliance with Cathy Linton, who is already married to another for all the wrong reasons. Heathcliff, a thoroughly Satanic creature, sucks Cathy and most of the characters around the drainhole in the eponymously named mansion.
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There’s not enough hatred in that review. Please edit and forward back to bureau chief.
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Have you seen my review of Catcher in the Rye, House on Mango Street, or Wuthering Heights?
What’s worse, making someone read or not allowing someone to read?
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Depends on the book. 
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True but let me add that making someone read something is bad but not allowing someone to read something is far worse.
Edit:
One caveat, I once forced my kids to watch It’s a Wonderful Life when they were little (I forget what I used as bait or coercion) but they later thanked me for it.
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I would argue that forcing a Muslim to read the Bible or a Christian to read the Quran would be worse than not allowing either to read their chosen book in school. And this is relevant to the direction Texas has pushed its schools.
If we’re just talking library books or literature, then I think people often confuse schools not providing books with disallowing them. A kid can literally haven’t any book at his fingertips, and nobody can stop that.
Disallowing reading altogether? How?
Gee.
I read it my Junior year in HS in English class, and LIKED it.
It’s the ULTIMATE “teen angst” novel. Holden Caulfield is a character many teens can identify with. Avril Lavigne was known for “teen angst” songs, especially early in her career. That novel could be thought of as a literary version of the same type of thinking.
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As far as forcing kids to read something, how would people here feel if a teacher required either “The Turner Diaries,” or “Mein Kampf” as readings?
For the record, in my freshman European history class at my undergrad college, we read an excerpt from “Mein Kampf,” really just to get a taste of how truly vile the work and the ideology it promotes were.
Now, here’s a question that will REALLY stir things up.
I think that many people would be horrified if students were asked to read “The Turner Diaries” or “Mein Kampf” in their entireties.
Yet it appears much more common for “Das Capital” and “The Communist Manifesto” to be assigned readings…especially in higher education…and people somehow seem less horrified by those works, never mind that the ideology that those books spawned, much like those spawned by those other two works, inspired its followers to kill many innocent people.
Any theories as to WHY that is?
Well, that’s kind of my point.
Having been around teens all of my professional life, I don’t care to dig any deeper than I need.
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Just imagine if he had read anything by Thomas Hardy.
I kind of liked Hardy. He seemed like a cool dude even if he was taken with himself. My son’s a good sport about it. If I really wanted to torment him I could have had him read political philosophy like Hegel or Kant. That would turn him against western civilization in general.
I read The Catcher in the Rye as a teen and thought the teen angst was awesome the first 2/3 of the book.
Then I thought the conclusion was missing. I did some of my first search engine searches on finding out what happened to JD Salinger and wasn’t sure what to think that he ran away from reality permanently like his main character.
Looking back it needed a conclusion with insights into the struggles and meaning of life…
But the author was too broken to deliver that.
It could be it’s too depressing for kids to read and they might give up on life. I notice my daughter needed constant encouragement like all kids and she turned out well. It could be that angle. Kids maybe lack the maturity to handle it where as college kids and adults can.
I saw that “The Awakening” by Kate Chopin is on the list.
I read that in HS in the same class as The Catcher in the Rye.
Don’t bother.
It’s a 19th century version of a Harlequin romance novel.
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