Otherwise always meeting deadlines in high school, I one night realized—to my horror—I had a test on the novel The Yearling the next day with only half the book read, so I was fated for an F. Then I thought, "I'll skim the second half but keep an eye out for the plot points." Remembering those, I took the test and got a B.

An aperitif read before a "real meal" of such a book might be the kindle The Very Minute Manager that is a comedic spoof of self help books, of the "success" sort. Again, it's an irreverent take on such books so might not be your thing, but it might...(it certainly doesn't sound like a college lecture)!

I'm reminded of the following Hemingway anecdote:

JOHN HALL WHEELOCK: "At a meeting in his office, Mr. Scribner said that he did not care to have his imprint on the book [The Sun Also Rises]. There was a long silence. Max Perkins could be very silent and not feel that he had to talk, not even to relieve embarrassment. Max was standing. Mr Scribner, who was seated at his desk, looked up at him and said: `Max, you haven't said anything. I'm turning the book down. Haven't you got something you'd like to say?' Max finally said, `Yes, I'd like to say this: That if we are going to turn down such a talent we might as well go out off the publishing business. We cannot got on publishing Richard Harding Davis, Thomas Nelson Page, George Cable, Henry Van Dyke, and other worthies. If we're going to be publishers, we have to move along with the talents of the time even though they might offend...well, even though they might offend our kind of taste.' Finally Mr. Scribner asked Max: `Will Hemingway change some of the four-letter words? Take them out?' Max said, `Yes, he will take some of them out, I'm quite sure.' `Which words will he take out?' said Mr. Scribner. Whereupon Max hastened to his office, got a piece of paper, came back and wrote down the words. Mr. Scribner looked at him (he had a very mischievous sense of humor) and he said: `Max—if Ernest knew that you couldn't say those words, that you had to write them down, he'd disown you!'" — From George Plimpton's The Writer's Chapbook

The title of this thread actually resembles something Holden would say. Except Holden probably would have italicized something. "Does anyone actually like the Catcher in the Rye?"