Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Oct 06, 2008

Paul rated it:

In retrospect it's a great shame The Carpenters missed their golden opportunity to release a single called "Raise High the Roof Beam".

7 comments like (17 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Rolls rated it:

Anyone who read my review of Salinger's "Nine Stories" knows I love this man's work to death. I've read and enjoyed "Catcher in the Rye" and "Franny and Zooey" a whole hell of a lot too. I picked this up with a heart filled with admiration and optimism. Well that optimism was dashed upon the rocks of Salinger's self-indulgence and apparent disregard for his readers.

This book compiles two short stories first published in the New Yorker and are the final t More...

6 comments like (8 people liked it)

Nov 06, 2011

Jacob rated it:

10/8/2009: So basically, I’m waiting for Salinger to die.

I don’t mean that maliciously. Really. I bear no ill will towards the man, and I’d wish him a long and pleasant life as a hermit, full of good health and completely lacking in the company of stupid humans--except, well, he’s already had his. The old man is ninety, slowly doddering his way to ninety-one. Hasn’t published in decades. No one’s seen him in years; he doesn’t even yell at those durn kids to get off his lawn beca More...

4 comments like (10 people liked it)

Jun 17, 2008

Joshb rated it:

Salinger is very, very high on the sentimental favorites list, which makes this difficult to assess objectively - so let's start with the easy half of this two-novella collection.

Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters is wonderful, and while it occasionally dips a little too deeply into the preciousness well (the same well that Salinger comes oh-so-close to drowning in in Franny and Zooey), it works, and, if you've read A Perfect Day for Bananafish, serves as a pretty chilling prequel More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

May 03, 2011

Ashley rated it:

There were times when I was reading this book that I wondered whether or not I should reconsider Salinger as my favorite author... but then I realized why. Salinger does not write "skim-worthy" sentences. I really feel like the depth of his writing cannot be grasped if a person is not reading them with the utmost concentration. His short stories (Riase HIgh the Roof Beam, Carpenters and others I have read) seem, more or less, useless. In terms of a specific story, they are. But it More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 24, 2008

Dan rated it:

For as long as I can remember, people have told me that this was the worst of the Salinger collection. His Godfather III if you will. Having read it, I'm not sure what the hell they were thinking. For me, I enjoyed these two stories immensely. Raise High is written in the style of Franny and Zooey, though from the perspective of a different brother (Buddy). Seymour is different. I don't want to characterize it in one form or another. As a piece of background, both stories revolve around t More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 01, 2007

Eric rated it:

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters is an excellent short story that follows Buddy Glass on the day of his brother Seymour's wedding. The characters are compelling, you get to know them intimately in the brief time that you have with them, and the story reveals a little more about the inner workings of the Glass family along the way.

Seymour, An Introduction is for those who take an almost voyeuristic pleasure in knowing everything there is to know about the glass family. The story More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Avital rated it:

Incredble! The way he describes the messed up wedding, the way in the taxi and then that incredible dive into his brother's soul through a page of his diary. The little old uncle! The second story seems like a powerful non-fiction.
His writing is so close to the surface-he writes about the world's reaction to his only published novel, about teaching, about fans and rude people that send him belligerent or all-knowing letters. He writes about pompous academia figures. And about isolating him More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 26, 2011

Leonie rated it:

Two short stories/novellas about the Glass family. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters is lovely. Salinger's prose has a bounce to it; it follows the idiosyncracies of personal experience and its way of doing so means it cleaves close to the humorous and touching without quite coming out and showing that it's trying to be those things. Seymour: an Introduction is not the same kind of thing at all; it's much more a meandering, self-indulgent post-modern account of a writing process than an act More...

0 comments like

Nov 06, 2011

Barry rated it:

11/6 - Roofbeam - whoa, this was word-for-word/syllable-for-syllable, ridiculously amazing. And so FUNNY! My favoritest piece since falling in love at Bananafish. I'm scared of the Glass saga ending, but it seems like it could almost be endlessly cyclical (oh how Hindu! i love it... :) )

11/6 - Seymour - it doesn't have that lyrical, lubricated readability of Roofbeam or his best stories, but it's never tedious like Zooey is and in fact has a ton of proto-postmod radness going on, albei More...

0 comments like

Jul 06, 2011

Ropila rated it:

There are two Salinger (Catcher in the Rye) books here. One was fantastic (Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters) and one sucked (Seymour: an Introduction). Raise High is a classic Salinger. One of the Franny and Zooie family comes into town for the oldest brother's (Seymour) wedding in NYC. Seymour stands up the bride, and our author (whose name I forgot) traipses around NYC with some of the wedding party. Slowly they realize that this dweeb on leave is Seymour's brother. Just fantastic.
More...

0 comments like

Apr 07, 2011

Allison rated it:

Officially my new favorite author. J.D. Salinger's writing is witty, funny, smart, and well rounded. The only thing preventing this book from getting a fifth star is that he is a bit...odd sometimes. The stories end with strange flops, and contain bizarre and sometimes gratuitous references. But I suppose it's part of what makes him unique. The characters are real, well-rounded people, with believable (if not slightly more eloquent) thought processes. Truth be told, I have not quite finished Sey More...

3 comments like

Apr 02, 2011

Adam rated it:

Part of the fun of reading Saligner’s short stories is piecing together the story of the Glass family. Rather than writing a single novel about the Glass family with a linear plot, told by a single narrator, he has split the story up into multiple ones, told at different times from different characters. This makes for more active and exciting reading.

"Raise High…" is hilarious. It’s the story of Buddy en route to his brother Seymour’s wedding. The plot moves faster than More...

1 comment like

Jan 27, 2011

Jeff rated it:

Today marks the one year anniversary of Salinger's death, and fittingly, though not purposefully, today I finished the final story of his that I had yet to read. That is to say, that he published. After reading "Seymour" I can't help but want to write long-winded parenthetical-laced (double worded singular nouns with impregnated hyphens) sentences that go on and on and force a reader to go back to the baptismal font to capture a glistening sliver of what the Hell I'm talking about.
More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 07, 2011

Belen rated it:

algo que escribi cuando lo leía, en esas epocas. (2006) Hoy quiero hablar de Salinger... si, ...el escritor yankee ese TAN GROSO a mi gusto... algunos lo conoceran por haber leido "the catcher in the rye" en el colegio privado y biligue y re-cheto de zona norte, otros por la peli "descubriendo a forrester" que no vi... en fin. ya he hablado de Salinger en este blog, pero no voy a contener mis ansias de seguir explayandome... estoy leyendo "Seymour...una introduccion" More...

0 comments like

May 12, 2010

Heather rated it:

While Seymour did start to get a little old with the narrator, Buddy’s, description of his older suicided brother, Seymour, I love the tone, the voice, the undercurrent throughout. And what Salinger was trying to do: keep Buddy’s older role model brother young alive and still a model, someone who Buddy can continue learning from. In that way Buddy is able to deal (or not deal) with his grief. Or more accurately, he starts to reminisce and to grieve. We bear witness to this as writing about Seymo More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 02, 2010

Marcia rated it:

a long time ago, my friend sent me this passage from raise high and it reminded me 1) why i love salinger and 2) why we are best friends.
"...Muriel loved the kitten and wanted me to love it. Even in the dark, I could sense that she felt the usual estrangement from me when I don't automatically love what she loves. Later, when we were having a drink at the station, she asked me if I didn't think that kitten was 'rather nice.' She doesn't use the word 'cute' any more. When did I e More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 22, 2009

Amar rated it:

Raise High: 3 stars
Seymour: 2 stars

There's something to Salinger, there really is. I've mentioned this before in other reviews, but it's an originality--of circumstance, of characters, of humor--that makes any material of his, no matter how bad, worth reading. Which is why, despite Buddy's incessant droning (Buddy: brother of Seymour and narrator) in Seymour: An Introduction, I kept reading, knowing that little nuggets of original creation lied ahead, nuggets which, in entire b More...

0 comments like

Jul 05, 2009

Brittany rated it:

It's an original collection of 2 short stories by JD Salinger. The first story tells of a twenty-something, Buddy, on the day his older brother, Seymour, is about to get married. Here you learn about the person of Buddy and hints of who Seymour really is as a person. The cast of characters are raw and remind you of people you've met before or feelings you've had before.
The second short story is less of a story with a plot or cast of characters, but more of a story about how a now forty More...

0 comments like

Jan 09, 2011

Lorelei rated it:

Salinger seems to have a knack for keeping me hooked; I finished this one in one night and Franny & Zooey the other night. I don't quite understand some readers' absolute distaste for Seymour: An Introduction; reality and realizations are often messy, disordered, and delayed. Not all art is wrapped in a bow or orderly to look at, and if one has seen any modern/post-modern art and has admired that, I don't understand not being able to at least partially admire the second part of this book.

More...

0 comments like

Feb 10, 2010

Anne rated it:

As I may have mentioned before, for a long time I didn't care for Salinger. I feel a little like a tool for re-visiting him because he died, but oh well.

"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and "Seymour: An Introduction" both took me a while. They're the kind of stories that I feel like I read without really absorbing much, so I think I've missed a lot of important stuff in there. In the end, I think I preferred the latter. It's almost like Tristram Shandy More...

0 comments like

Mar 20, 2011

Dustin rated it:

I think it was pretty fitting that Seymour: An Introduction was the last work to be published in Salinger's last book. It is clearly largely auto-biographical, and seems to hint at why he chose the life he did. Honestly, the first two thirds of it are insufferably long-winded and boring. Really not all that interesting. Ostensibly, he is answering fan mail about Seymour's appearance. But it just goes on and on. In the end it turns into a nice description of Seymour's kindness and character More...

0 comments like

Oct 10, 2010

Patricia rated it:

This is the October Library Book Group selection and a J.D. Salinger creation I have not read. Reading the first story I was delighted to remember how much I love J. D. Salinger. Something about his prose leaves me just on the edge of a delighted hoot. Seymour, an Introduction, I did not love. I felt it was in need of a firm editor, and I ended up skimming most of it. Before Salinger's death, I would imagine, now and then, that when he died we would get to read all the things I assumed he h More...

0 comments like

Nov 15, 2010

Tatiana rated it:

Okay.

So i was on the subway coming home from work, reading 'nine stories', specifically 'esme', and i started thinking about what to say here. because i couldn't quite articulate what makes this stuff so good right after finish 'roofbeams', but then i went to a party friday and drunkenly tried (poorly) to explain it to one or two (probably 12) people.

and i'll try now, but i'm sure it's not going to be much better than friday.

part of it is obviously the glass family More...

0 comments like

Jul 07, 2011

Sean rated it:

I plan to re-read some Salinger stories in the wake of finishing his biography. I wasn't sure if I had previously read Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, although I've long owned an old paperback copy that belonged to one of my parents. This story is really fantastic, one of the best stories I've read in a long time. It shows off many of Salinger's strengths: realistic dialogue, sly humor, and masterful characterization. I think he is at the height of his storytelling game in this piece. I op More...

0 comments like

Oct 06, 2009

dara rated it:

I wish I could give this book two different ratings--obviously for the two drastically different stories. As it is I have to settle for subtracting a star from the 5-star rating I would have given this if it had been "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" alone.

From a sense of charity alone, I'd give "Seymour: An Introduction" one star. When other reviewers advise skipping it, they aren't kidding. Not only is "Seymour: An Introduction" a tedious, unpleas More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 30, 2011

Bonnie Gayle rated it:

I'm cheating a wee bit because I've read the first one, but not the second, but I'm trying to finish off the challenge so I get a badge, so...I *did* read one entire story.

Anyways. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters was lovely. Absolutely lovely. It had the same tender heart that Catcher in the Rye did, but lots more humor. Like laugh out loud humor. And so well written, too. I will ever love how Salinger does italics. Perfect. I read large sections of this out loud to myself just More...

5 comments like

Mar 23, 2009

April rated it:

I'd suggest you read Nine Stories before you read this one. This book focuses mostly on the Glass family, and Salinger treats them with much more affection than the assortment of characters in Nine Stories. This book is less humorous and more thought-provoking, particularly on matters pertaining to what it means (and doesn't) to be part of a family. The stories also touch on how our best-laid plans to do right by one another can easily (and sometimes imperceptibly) go awry, as well as the seemin More...

0 comments like

Sep 30, 2010

Leigh rated it:

I reread this book for the first time in years in a tent in the Badger Creek wilderness. I had pulled a muscle in my shoulder, the wind was howling, I was pretty sure I'd drunk some bad water and the two dogs sharing my tent were doing what dogs LOVE to do when they're with you in a small, poorly ventilated space. Slurp slurp slurp.

Anyway, the fact that I was absolutely engrossed from beginning to end pretty much says it all. I love this book--at least the first half (Raise High...) More...

2 comments like

Dec 30, 2008

Laura rated it:

For the first time in several minutes, I glanced around at the tiny elderly man with the unlighted cigar. The delay didn't seem to affect him. His standard of comportment for sitting in the rear seat of cars - cars in motion, cars stationary, and even, one couldn't help imagining, cars that were driven off bridges into rivers - seemed to be fixed. It was wonderfully simple. You just sat very erect, maintaining a clearance of four or five inches between your top hat and the roof, and you stared f More...

0 comments like