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The first book I had read in it’s entirety when I was a kid, and the only book I have in my Gym bag ( I’ve re-started the book 2 weeks ago) besides my Bible, and including the Bible, the only book I gave my nephew to read, is ‘the Catcher In The Rye.’


The reclusive author, Jerome David Salinger (non de plume JD Salinger) died yesterday of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire, according to a family statement that his literary agent, Phyllis Westberg, provided Thursday.

The book is narrated by a teenage boy, Holden Caulfield, who is expelled from a private school, Pencey Prep, in Pennsylvania, and spends the next three days wandering around New York. Caulfield is mistrustful of authority, railing against corrupt adults and "phonies," and plans to decamp for the west.

"An unusually brilliant first novel," The New York Times called it, one of many raves.

Though intended for adult readers, the book touched a nerve among teenagers attracted by Caulfield's nonconformist attitudes and has remained a best-seller since its release. It has gone through dozens of printings in its simple mass-market paperback edition, clad in a simple maroon cover adorned with the title and author's name on the front and back.

It's also been a lightning rod for controversy. Schools have banned it -- troubled by Caulfield's language and attitude as well as his adventures with a prostitute -- and some readers have been obsessed by it, most infamously Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon in 1980. – courtesy of cnn.com