The Catcher in the Rye (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Modern Library; Book Club (BCE/BOMC) edition (1951)
• ISBN-10: 0241900972
• ISBN-13: 978-0241900970
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #338,316 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I'm in Love with Holden Caulfield (and J.D. Salinger), August 6, 2007

By	J. A Bowen "tabithajab" (Millersville, MD) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

To give "The Catcher in the Rye" 5 stars is like giving "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare" 5 stars. I'm not kidding.

I read "The Catcher in the Rye" in the 8th grade. And, okay, I was a little bit more than entranced by the (shocking!) use of profanity. This was, after all, 1968.

But even more, I was mesmerized and enthralled, I was even swept off my little flat feet, by Holden's sensitivity, his absolute purity of heart. Okay, he does wrong things, he engages a prostitute, he flunks out of a very expensive private school when he knows his poor parents have already been put through absolute hell (his younger brother Allie dies of leukemia at the age of 13 and this has already happened at the time the book is being narrated). But at the same time, he is an innocent. He is caught up in place and time that he can't make sense of, simply because he is who he is. He cares, and he tries to take care of others who are lost and floundering. It is so obvious that he is a diamond among rhinestones.

So he doesn't fit in anywhere, and neither do most of us. We're just trying to find our way. This is one of the most brilliant studies of adolesence ever written. Holden feels, he lives and breathes, he is, for all his flaws, or maybe even because of them, almost a Christlike figure.

J.D. Salinger wrote a book about an adolescent who was, in his way, much like an archetype of innocence. For this he is should be lauded as a literary genius. This book should be taught everywhere as a sort of guidebook to values clarification for the youth of America.

Totally aside from that, it is very funny and compulsively readable. No one can possibly be bored with this book, despite its seeming lack of plot.

"The Catcher in the Rye" is a life-changing book. Read it. You will never be the same.

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything Promised and More, September 19, 2009

By	JMM (Venice, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

The book was in even better condition then described and at a very fair price.

5.0 out of 5 stars Beginning of a library, January 30, 2009

By	IMPACT ONE (MINNESOTA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

One of my daughters just recently graduated from Penn State and moved to Manhattan. She mentioned that she was going to start a library, and that she wanted to start it with Catcher in the Rye. On to Amazon, where I was able to find an affo9rdable collectors edition, I gave her this book as well as a leather bound volume of 1,001 books to read before you die. Also included were copies of Aesops Fables and Grimms Fairy Tales, without which no library is complete