Great! I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts. Many more recommendations where those came from.

Oh, definitely a great one. There’s also one I haven’t read yet called something like A Stroke of Genius that’s written by a brain scientist. Oh yeah, read Farm City too. Tuesdays with Morrie is heartwarming, although a bit cheesy.

EDIT: The Basketball Diaries is a wild ride. It was written by a teenage heroin addict who later was in a band. Their big hit was People Who Died. Give it a listen! ,

You are just a joy to chat with. 😉

This whole discussion made me find the book and get ready to reread my favorite passages again. The bookmark just happened to be at the part where he lined up the prostitute:

“Okay, I said. It was against my principles and all, but I was feeling so depressed I didn’t even think. That’s the whole trouble. When you’re feeling very depressed, you can’t even think.

“Hey, is she good looking?” I asked him. “I don’t want any old bag.”

Are you a bot?

I read this book as a teenager purely because i wanted to after reading the first page. I have since reread parts of it periodically numerous times over the course of 40 years. It still kills me every time.

All this talk about an unreliable narrator or whatever…. Who cares? We’re not in high school English class here.

He hired a prostitute and tried to get frisky with Sally. Not gay.

Well, it’s not a competition. There are many unforgettable characters in fiction. I’ll never forget Miss Havisham, for example.

Professor Thurber? Just a spot-on description of an ancient college professor with no more fucks to give.

Holden’s brother who killed himself was maybe his personification of suicidal depression. The short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish, in the collection Nine Stories, is epic.

He was a freak as a person, but his work is amazing IMHO.

And the one with Professor Thurber, and all the scenes with Stradlater and Sally…

The representation of depression and teen angst was revelatory.

And every scene involving Stradlater was a masterpiece.

Oh cool! I love a good memoir. Some I’ve enjoyed: Dry by Augusten Burroughs, Paula by Isabel Allende, anything by David Sedaris or Anne Lamott, Marbles by Ellen Forney, Fun Home by Allison Bechdel, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers; anything by Bill Bryson or Jon Krakauer; Wild by Cheryl Strayed; anything by JoannDidion, but especially The Year of Magical Thinking

Are you still up for young adult novels? Try anything by John Green, the Divergent and Hunger Games series, Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian…

If you’re up for trying mysteries, try Louise Penny or of course Agatha Christie.

For adult fiction, I like Kate Atkinson, Jennifer Egan, the book Revolutionary Road; Tom Perrotta, Frederick or Donald Barthelme; David Foster Wallace; Watership Down, Gameof Thrones, All the Light We Cannot See, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera; anything by Ocean Vuong or James Baldwin or George Orwell. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell.

FYI many libraries can provide a list of reading suggestions based on your preferences.

What kinds of books do you like? My taste and yours may be very different.

Holy shit, he was the only other teenager who ever understood me.

Is this a joke? Are you still holding a grudge against Yoko?

My favorite book, mostly because after reading every book in the school library, I lost interest in reading for the most part in my tween years. Then one day I stumbled upon a copy in my brother’s room and inhaled it in one day. Fast forward 40 years and I’m a librarian.

I do not, but your library system may offer a way to do that. At mine we use a system called BiblioCommons where you can track what you’ve read, comment on books, etc.

They may be rethinking whether they really want to spend their time reading “challenging” books. There is nothing wrong with reading for pleasure and not finishing books that feel like a chore to slog through.