The Novelle: inreview

18:00

The Catcher In The Rye - J.D. Salinger

Holden Caulfield is a seventeen year old drop out who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Navigating his way through the challenges of growing up, Holden dissects the "phony" aspects of society, and the "phonies" themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scored with girls using sickly sweet affection.

Now let me get this straight, I am not a person who rereads books but I have had the recent urge to reread this book for quite a while now. I personally don't see the point in rereading books when there are just so many books out there that you haven't read or that haven't come out yet. However, this book has recently just been willing me to reread it and so I succumbed. This is by far one of my favourite books of all time and this reread has definitely cemented that for me.

Holden Caulfield is a character you will either love or hate, or even quite simply love to hate - I for one absolutely love him. He is a cynic and he is precocious, but he has this endearing naivety that you just can't help but feel for. It seems that experiences and influences in his childhood have shaped him to be the way he is, but you can tell through the writing that however cool, calm and collected Holden may seem, underneath he's just a scared little boy that doesn't know what to do with his life.

The narrative is written from Holden's perspective and the development of the story and of his character is predominantly displayed through this feature. His thoughts and speech throughout the book become more out of control as the book progresses; he starts to repeat himself a lot and the terms he uses in every day life, like "boy", "prince" and "swell" don't tend to pop up as often as they did in the beginning. The writing is very loud at the same time as being very subtle in it's background meaning which added to the greatness of this book.

This book has the simplest of stories but the deepest and richest of ways that it is portrayed and developed. It's a coming of age story that doesn't span across a long period of time (or pages in the book) but makes you feel as though you've learnt so much about yourself and Holden Caulfield at the same time. The focus isn't necessarily on what happens in the book, but the consequences and the reasoning behind what has happened - why is he acting this way? Why is he so cynical? Why is nearly everyone on the planet a phony in his eyes? It certainly has a lot of deeper meanings than the literal story itself.

The Catcher In The Rye is one of those books that I will treasure forever. I've currently only got it on my Kindle but when I return home I will most certainly buy my own copy to reread again and again as it's definitely a keeper in my books. I don't think I can express how much I love this book.

Rating: ★★★★★

(Pst, I believe I rated this higher the second time around - I don't know why I only gave it 4 stars before)

18:00

Spring Clean Your TBR: April in Review

18:00

March In Review

When I say I've had a lot of time to read this month, I mean a lot. This has been my first month "working" on a farm, and the reason that I put the word working in inverted commas is because I've been here for almost a month now and I've only worked 3 times. So, as you can tell I've had a lot of free time on my hands to get through some of the books I've been wanting to read for a long time as well as keeping up to date with writing on my blog.

I decided to sign up for Amazon's Kindle Unlimited service this month as well which will give me the chance to finish the Harry Potter and Mortal Instruments series - finally! I haven't had any problems with it thus far, but I have noticed that there isn't an abundance of good titles on the service. I did a bit of research myself, and found out that a lot of big publisher names have opted out of this idea leaving the big titles out the game. I'm sure you'll find a hidden treasure in there somewhere, but the majority of the books on there aren't enough to persuade me to carry on once I've finished the aforementioned series.

Pages Read: 1736

Books Read

★★★★☆ Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban - JK Rowling

★★★★☆ A Tale For The Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

★★☆☆☆ City Of Lost Souls - Cassandra Clare

★★★★☆ The Duff - Kody Keplinger

I've been pretty impressed with all of the books I've read this month except one. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban was as good as always and from what I remember, after the third book is when it starts getting into the nitty gritty of the series, so I'm really excited to carry on until the end (finally!).

For some reason I didn't expect to like A Tale For The Time Being* as the synopsis didn't really pull me in - I'll be honest, I decided to read this because of the different amazing covers I've seen (guilty as charged). However, I was pleasantly surprised to absolutely adore this book and found it to be similar to another Asian author, Haruki Murakami in it's style and simple but effective story.

City Of Lost Souls was a burden to get through. This series seems to be getting progressively worse as it goes off on a tangent for the majority of the book to write about the love story. It majorly affects the story and makes the characters naive and ridiculiusly stupid in their decisions. I've decided I hate Clary and think she's the dumbest character I have ever read. The thing is, is that the story is actually quite intriguing if you take away the romance, and I don't see why Cassandra Clare can't just focus on that.

After the last book, The Duff* was such a relief and such a brilliant end to the month. It is plain and simply what a YA book should be comprised of; life lessons, morals as well as the every day life of an every day teenager. I think Kody Keplinger rounded off all these points perfectly in one book and I was left thinking about my own life after finishing this wonderful book.

*Link to review