As an introduction, I'm Caitlin, Janelle's roommate. I'm an uneasy English major who reads books and writes journals/blogs. Writing fiction makes me nervous, I don't know why. But I like recommending things to other people! So here we go.
To be honest, I have not been reading much for pleasure lately. I thought I would try and jump start this over Christmas Break, but I did not. Instead I just got more into TV/movies. I consider them worthwhile forms as entertainment as well, but I feel less guilty about being overly attached to books, because they are good for the brain, or something. Whatever it is they say in school.
Anyway, my point is, whenever I find myself in this rut, I tend to read pieces of the same books to try and love reading books so much again that it overwhelms my guilt about not getting schoolwork done or thinking about My Uncertain Future while reading for pleasure. I also enjoy magazines a lot.
One of these books is "Catcher in the Rye," which is a book that seems to create a lot of strong opinions. Let me get this out of the way: I do not think of myself as, nor do I want to be like, Holden Caulfield. The guy is in an awkward stage of life and embodies confusion and contradiction, even as he wails on about all the "phonies" of the world. He would probably be REALLY annoying in real life, with his sudden outbursts and random lying and cursing pretensions.
But maybe that's because you couldn't see inside his head in real life, and that's important, because even though he is sill kind of annoying in there, you can also see the potential and that he's not all that bad of a guy, really.
I don't know, the guy thinks in one liners filled with curses and it makes me laugh. And his relationship with his sister near the end always makes me happy, as it balances out his loud bluffing in the beginning as he struggles to get along with people. It's nice to have a Phoebe that accepts all your ridiculousness.
Next time: Maybe David Sedaris. Did Janelle already write about him? Well I will again, I guess.
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Nope, I didn't write about good old David Sedaris except to direct people to "Me Talk Pretty One Day." I'm glad you finally got a chance to post!
ReplyDeleteHolden Caulfield is kind of a jerk sometimes, isn't he? I mean, that's funny in an odd sort of way, like with the first few lines of the book (rather amusing). Yeah, I'm worried about MUF too (sigh).