The Catcher in the Rye
discussion
The Most Overrated Books
Nikki wrote: "I think it enjoys an inflated reputation because it is assigned reading in a number of schools so a great deal of people who have read it are not big readers.....it ends up being one of the very few books they have read so they talk about it when the conversation turns books."Actually, I agree, now that you've stated it this way.
I suppose the same is true of a number of frequently assigned books, such as Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird, neither of which is a literary masterpiece but strikes a chord with a lot of people.
Another would be The Outsiders, a book written in a voice so crude and clumsy that that it adds authenticity to its first-person narrator. (Hmmm, similar to Holden.) It has sold over seven million copies since the late '60s when it came out, and was made into a hugely successful film, an instant classic.
Chava wrote: "Whenever I see a person slam, or call The Catcher In the Rye an overrated, my heart breaks a little more. It is beyond my comprehension how someone can hate this book. In my mind, if you hated it, ..."Nancy wrote: "Chava wrote: "Whenever I see a person slam, or call The Catcher In the Rye an overrated, my heart breaks a little more. It is beyond my comprehension how someone can hate this book. In my mind, if ..."
I agree! I wonder if it is mainly women that don't like this book.
Also, this list is malarky as many don't understand the time some of these books were written. They were way of ahead of their time.
@ aeroman, actually women have been some of the most staunch defenders of this book on the thread. I don't think gender has anything to do with whether or not the reader liked this book. I'm male and I HATED it, but there are other men that liked it.
I am Chava and I'm a woman! And I love this book. That's an understatement!
I loved it too. Salinger wrote several more books, all relevant to humans trying to connect with real feelings instead of going with insensate, reductive social programming. This is a subject we can't exhaust. Hardy wrote about it too, and Dickens, and many others. They all had individual writing styles and maybe their styles reflected the times in which they lived, but the subject is ever with us: how to be true to ourselves and refrain from harming others.
Also female and also loved Catcher in the Rye. Didn't like Little Women though. Go figure.
Chava wrote: "I am Chava and I'm a woman! And I love this book. That's an understatement!"I didn't expect I would like it much either but when I read it I was hypnotized in it.
I can't say I liked it when I was studying it in high school. It was depressing, but I did when I got to the end and I understood it. Since reading it the first time, I have loved it because of the masterful writing, and its message.
Maria wrote: "Which books do you think are overrated? Here's a quick sampling from various internet sites that recommend skipping these:
The Catcher in the Rye
Moby Dick
The Great Gatsby
Waiting for Godot
The..."
Well yes apart from Moby dick that I still think is one of the greatest books ever written and the da Vinci code which was a great read of a thriller.
Classics are classics for a reason. Personally, I loved Godot, Catcher in the Rye and Moby Dick. I labored through Ulysses and Gatsby in school. Twilight is just bad writing and I didn't think DaVinci Code was all that original - definitely not anything that a Catholic hadn't already thought of in CCD....For my part, these modern serialized books are a bit overrated...ones where the movie and tv rights are already sold before the book has even been published, the Bones series, the Fire/Ice stories, definitely Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey... If you need to write 10 books to tell one story, then perhaps looking to another career path...
I just reread The Outsiders for the first time since 9th grade, and I can hardly believe that it was actually required reading. Very overrated.
can I add The English Patient? the only book I didnt finish. hate the movie also
Atlas Shrugged? DaVinci Code? Twilight? Oh please, someone stop publishing them! They're simply mediocre and should be on the same list with the others. On a roll, however, I'd add a few by Joyce Carole Oates. I haven't read anything of hers I thought qualified as good writing but clearly I am in the minority on this point.
Maria wrote: "Which books do you think are overrated?
Here's a quick sampling from various internet sites that recommend skipping these:
The Catcher in the Rye
Moby Dick
The Great Gatsby
Waiting for Godot
The..."
Join this thread and tell us who you think is the vilest fictional character.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
It would be a terribly boring world if everyone agreed on what is over-rated. However except for citr I agree with most of the list. Read Godot and Stranger in french class so I am not sure of what I read. I found everything else on the list quite dreadful.
The people who are saying they hated Catcher sound exactly like Holden Caulfield - pitch-perfect. I personally love all the books on this list except the last three.
I think you're mistaking critique for rants, Carmen.
Linda wrote: "Would also add The Book Thief. Totally overrated."Agree 100%, full of cliches and common places, not original at all and not even well written.
Da Vinci Code and Twilight are so completely awful that they shouldn't even be in a list with the others. Apples and oranges. Atlas Shrugged sucked (Ayn RANT was in dire need of an editor, to say the least), but it's probably worth reading so that you have good arguing points for all those hopeless "Who's John Galt" bumper-sticker types who want to convince you of its greatness and their politics. Now, I didn't like Gatsby at all in high school, but after reading it again as an adult, it has become one of my all-time favorite books. I read it every couple of years or so.
Chava wrote: "... Holden C.? How can you hate a boy so obviosuly a teenager, who is mourning, and confused, angry and adorable , yet at the same time funny and heartbreaking as hell. Ha just trying to cope with life. "As with most of the books on the list there is something in most of these books that make them worthwhile but they are NOT for everyone. Nor will those who might enjoy them enjoy them at just any stage in their lives.
Where our educational system fails is that we keep steering folks to these "classics" and then not explaining what makes them great.
The Catcher in the Rye was really a book of it's era. The kid was in mourning and in someways the world's first teenager. Teenagers weren't really seen as a group prior to this as much as they were in the post WWII era. Look at the bobbysox phenomenon and the somewhat later Rock N Roll era. Teens started to come into their own as a group.
it tickles me to always find high school required reading on lists like these.
Carmen wrote: "The people who are saying they hated Catcher sound exactly like Holden Caulfield - pitch-perfect. I agree! Just for fun, I read all the comments and asked myself which sounded like Holden Caufield wrote them? It was a VERY interesting experiment.
Stephen wrote: "Where our educational system fails is that we keep steering folks to these "classics" and then not explaining what makes them great."Are you sure it's the educational system? When I was in school there were a bunch of kids in the back not paying a bit of attention to teachers who were trying their best to inspire kids. In my day they were passing notes and shooting spitwads, but now I guess they are texting their drug dealers.
Well, I sat in the front row (I had a vision program that went undiagnosed until I was 16) and none of my small town high school teachers did a great job of actually explaining WHY some books were considered great. In fact most of the professors that I had in my "American Thought & Language" & Humanities classes did a mediocre job. It was only later in life that I started to gain an appreciation of these things on my own.
As to drug dealers... The only drugs that were readily available in my home town were alcohol & tobacco. (Some brewed locally) Others did become available as I reached college age.
Stephen wrote: "Well, I sat in the front row (I had a vision program that went undiagnosed until I was 16) and none of my small town high school teachers did a great job of actually explaining WHY some books were ..."I'm sorry you had poor teachers. It's a shame, but you are to be commended for reading them on your own. I had exceptional ones who showed me so much and inspired me to think of classics as treasures to be mined for meaning. I didn't like all the books, and we read just about every classics on the high school lists, but I learned from them. They also gave me exceptional vocabulary and the ability to read long and complex sentences, both learned by the proverbial blood, sweat and tears. This wasn't some fancy prep school either, just a Fairfax Co., VA high school.
I was the kid in the class who was completely bored with "Gatsby", but when we read "Journey to the West" found that desire to read rekindle again. Sadly, my entire class hated it and we dropped the subject - but I finished it myself.
I admit I skimmed some passages in An American Tragedy, but most of the others I liked especially after we started discussing them. I wasn't crazy about The Deerslayer either, but strangely enough, I remember most of the book even to this day.Actually, I also thought Hamlet should have been called Much Ado about Nothing, but that was due to my lack of experience more than the play. Reading it out loud made it better.
Being an Atlas fan I disagree with it being on the list. The book surely drags on and on in several places, but it pounds its message across and remains relevant today.More interesting to me would be a list of the top 10 most under rated novels.
That's just it Terry. It pounds its message in. Overbearingly. It's more a diatribe than a novel.
i>Anne Hawn wrote: "Stephen wrote: "Well, I sat in the front row (I had a vision program that went undiagnosed until I was 16) and none of my small town high school teachers did a great job of actually explaining WHY ..."
Anne Hawn wrote: "Stephen wrote: "Well, I sat in the front row (I had a vision program that went undiagnosed until I was 16) and none of my small town high school teachers did a great job of actually explaining WHY ..."
Michael wrote: "Making a list like this is like making a list of the most over rated ice cream flavors.Chocolate
Strawberry
Vanilla
What do you think constitutes something being 'over rated' to begin with? Is i..."
I agree-Strawberry ice cream is overrated!
Stephen wrote: "Where our educational system fails is that we keep steering folks to these "classics" and then not explaining what makes them great."I had great teachers; it was their enthusiasm that encouraged us to take on difficult books. In one class term we read Beowulf, two Dickens novels, Thomas Hardy, and Shakespeare. In another we read Steinbeck, Hemingway, Wilder, Salinger. Did we 'get' everything in what we read, or why they were worth reading? No, because we were kids, with limited experience of life; but I'll bet those in the class who loved to read were intrigued enough to try them again later. Reading takes practice, like any skill. Overrated books are generally not worth re-reading.
I definitely have to agree with The Catcher in the Rye. In my opinion, that book was dreadfully boring. I really couldn't understand or see why this book is considered a "classic".
Kallie wrote: "I had great teachers; it was their enthusiasm that encouraged us to take on difficult books. In one class term we read Beowulf, two Dickens novels, Thomas Hardy, and Shakespeare. In another we read Steinbeck, Hemingway, Wilder, Salinger."Hmmm, did you go to Fairfax Co. schools too? I think we both are right about the fact that enthusiastic teachers who love classics and convey that to their students make all the difference in the world.
I was tutoring a high school student a while back and we were reading The Great Gatsby. When we finished he said, "I didn't know that classics were books you were supposed to actually like!" Now he's finished college and he's teaching high school and I bet he conveys the same thing to his students.
I just finished Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" when I saw this thread...and I would have to add that book to the overrated list. Important...perhaps. But after starting with promise..it seriously deteriorates. It doesn't work as a novel for me.
I just finished the Spark Notes (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/catcher)to refresh my memory of the book and I saw something I have never seen before. Holden Caufield could be any of the school shooters that have plagued our nation's schools. He starts the book when he is in a rest home for psychological problems. The reader is then led through one incident after another where he is becoming increasingly isolated, angry and depressed. He is becoming markedly angry at all the people who have disappointed or betrayed him and everything he does makes his situation worse and worse. He is unable to see his own part in all his troubles and he has no insight into what is really upsetting him. In that state of mind, I can easily see him taking a gun and going back to his old school and shooting anyone he saw. I was overwhelmed with the similarity between what Holden was saying and the information given in the trials of Kip Kinkle, Michael Carneal, and Dylan Klebold.
I guess I will be reading the book again with this in mind. At any rate, it dispelled the notion that this book is outdated.
Maureen wrote: "A Clockwork OrangeThe Executioner's Song"
I agree that A Clockwork Orange is overrated. I made myself read that book because it's so popular and I thought there was a good reason behind it but I did not enjoy that book at all.
Anything Bill O'Riely is writing , The Killing Of ...
Anne Hawn wrote: "Holden Caufield could be any of the school shooters that have plagued our nation's schools."Yes, I blogged about this a couple of years ago on RedRoom.com
Monty J wrote: "Anne Hawn wrote: "Holden Caufield could be any of the school shooters that have plagued our nation's schools."Yes, I blogged about this a couple of years ago on RedRoom.com"
I don't get this from Holden. Read page 123 (or any number of pages) where he talks about girls and is sorry for them because they will probably marry boring guys. Yet there is compassion as well as irony in his comments about the boys, as though he intuits that they can't help being boring because of the roles society casts them in (he even admires one of them because though boring he's such a "terrific" whistler). I don't think that the killers you refer to are capable of the irony, let alone compassion, with which Holden Caulfield views his world.
It's his angst that makes him ready to either explode or implode. Fortunately for him, he implodes into a nervous breakdown. He feels betrayed by everyone. People and institutions fail him and he is so angry he wants to lash out against the world. Nothing goes right for him and his anger is mounting. Unfortunately, he can't see his own part in it. Mr. Antolini understands him and actually says he is heading for a fall. He tries to explain this to Holden and gives him some of the compassion he needs, but when he wakes up to see his teacher stroking his forehead (which is my own impulse towards this tortured boy) his fears about homosexuality cause him to run away. (I don't believe there is any evidence in the book that this is anything more than a teacher's care for this boy.)
Holden has experienced the death of his idolized brother and a good friend from prep school who "falls" committing suicide while wearing Holden's sweater. Mr. Antolini picks up the boy and carries him when no one else deals with the suicide. None of the adults, especially his parents, help him wade through these tragedies.
I truly understand something about this. A really nice boy who sat next to me in second grade bled to death and one of the things that effected me most was seeing my teacher cry. I felt like no one could protect me just like they couldn't protect him. It's a terrible feeling and it haunted me irrationally when my own son had his tonsils out.
The only thing that saves Holden is his sister. She loves him and shows it by being ready to run away with him. Murder and suicide are two sides of the same coin. One is explosion and the other is implosion. The irrational Holden could just as easily have gotten a gun and gone back to his school and started shooting.
Anne Hawn wrote: "It's his angst that makes him ready to either explode or implode. Fortunately for him, he implodes into a nervous breakdown. He feels betrayed by everyone. People and institutions fail him and h..."I still think it takes more (or less) to make someone a killer and certainly a mass murderer. I've known some angst-ridden, angry people; they were miserable and sometimes made others miserable, but they didn't and never would have killed anyone, not even a dog. On the other hand, I've knew someone determined to put a positive spin on life and other people's behavior who did kill himself.
With the bashing of Catcher, I'd like to say that back in 60 or whenever I read it, it totally blew me away. I was Holden zits and all, the book said a lot of what I'd felt at the time, no other book had done that. It was definitely a 'Holy Crap' read for me. That said, I think if read I were to re-read it today, 'I'd say What's the big deal'
Most Overrated:1. The Bible (Old Testament only. New Testament is OK.)
2. Atlas Shrugged
3. Moby Dick
4. Ulysses
The first one on your list is my pet peeve: Catcher in the Rye. To date myself, this book came out when I was in high school and, soon after, Franny & Zoey (it's sequel) and I didn't like it then and I reread it a few years back when one of my kids had read it for some report at school. It wasn't any better. I can spot a few others in that list that would never make my favorites list nor would I reread them, but then again, it is rather subjective, as someone mentioned. Reminds me of an old saying, "One man's meat is another man's poison."
Well,"The Holy Bible" (by various anon.) should be top of the list.
"Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace comes a close second.
Both books are absolutely terrible, but at least Infinite Jest doesn't claim to be true, and hasn't inspired wars, torture, genocide and the savage wholesale oppression of people on the basis of their skin color, gender, sexual orientation or beliefs.
Paula wrote: "OMG- I forgot 50 shades! Dude- I'm all for erotic stories... BUT THIS! THIS is the best we can do? No. No its not. "
AMEN!
Catcher in the Rye is so overrated. I usually don't leave comments here, but when I noticed this topic, I had to agree with this book being on the list.
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Here's a quick sampling from various internet sites that recommend skipping these:
The Catcher in the Rye
Moby Dick
The Great Gatsby
Waiting for Godot
The..."Satanic Verses"