Holden Caulfield has once again been kicked out of his fancy prep school. He can't go home yet, or his parents will know, and he's just not ready to deal with them. He tries to stick around school for a couple of days, but manages to irritate, or be irriated by, everyone around him, so he takes all the money he has and catches a bus out of there. He hangs out in bars, theatres, and hotels, until he misses his little sister so badly that he has to go home.
I read this book in high school, but couldn't remember much about it, other than that I had loved it then. I was almost afraid to re-read it, worried that it wouldn't live up to what I remembered. I was laughing out loud by the end of chapter one. Holden is such a strange, dorky, little dude. He's just trying to figure out his place in this world. He's got so much bottled up inside--the death of his brother, his intense love for his little sister, and the fact that he comes from a pretty good home but he's still really angry sometimes. He doesn't want to talk about it, and he doesn't, but he tells us, the reader.
This is one of the most frequently banned books of all time. I think it's because it's such an honest look into the teenage brain, and sometimes it's not pretty. We don't have this in our library, but you can find this just about anywhere. Any public library will have it, and I'm sure you could pick up a cheap used copy at Half-Price Books. Put it on your list. At some point in your life, it's a must-read.
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