Day Nine

Day 09 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving.

A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. It's got a bit of a gloomy, if not to say sinister, reputation, there's all that stuff about it being the book that motivated Mark Chapman to shoot and kill John Lennon so I was expecting it to be pretty bleak and to have a subtext running through it that encouraged readers to go out on the rampage. It is said to be the book he had asked John to sign earlier in the day but then it could just as well of been 'The House at Pooh Corner' ... it's a bit unfair to blame a book because someone who's clearly unstable has gone out and committed a murder.
Holden, the main character, is a depressive and he hates phonies but in no way is he violent, or an instigator of violence. I was quite touched by his narration, he's a young man trying to figure out the world and trying to come to terms with the death of his younger brother. He's angsty and troubled and doesn't always handle things in the best way but he recognises that eventually and seeks help.
Its a book that makes the lists for 'most overrated book' regularly so obviously it's not for everyone, there's not much light in it and the plot is quite thin, nothing much happens, but I'm ok with those sort of intimate novels where you just spend time in the protagonists head, as long as that head has interesting thoughts. I guess I loved it more because I was expecting to hate it.