The Catcher in the Rye

It's been a while since I've read this book, but it's another one of my all-time favorites. I read this one right after its author, J. D. Salinger, died and I realized that I'd never actually read anything that he wrote. Although I'm not at all glad that Salinger is dead, I am extremely glad that I read this book.

Like The Sound and the Fury, there's not a whole lot of plot to this book. It's essentially the mental demise of the main character and narrator, Holden Caulfield. The whole novel is told as a flashback; although it's never described explicitly, Holden has some kind of mental breakdown and the book is a reflection of the events leading up to it. The book opens on the last day of Holden's day at his boarding school before his expulsion is effective. After leaving school he goes to New York and just kind of bums around the city. One of Holden's main concentrations is the death of Allie, his younger brother. He is also caught up on people and things which he labels "phony".

In a way, The Catcher in the Rye is almost a coming-of-age story. There's a lot of themes about adolescent angst and having to deal with the world. Additionally, Holden Caulfield is one of the most sympathetic characters in American literature, since almost everyone that reads this book ends up identifying with him on one level or another, whether it's his hatred of phonies, lack of clear direction, or struggles in his relationships.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. It moves pretty easily; the chapters are fairly short and the language is simple. I found that I had a hard time putting it down as I was reading it, and it's one of those books that will hit you differently each time you read it...so multiple reads are absolutely recommended.

The Sound and the Fury

I haven't actually finished one of my 1001 books yet since I started this project, but as I mentioned there's about 50 of them which I've already read, so until I do finish one I thought I could talk about those which I've already finished. I thought would be good to start out talking about one of my very favorites:

I read this book for the first time just a couple of months ago. I actually read it for my American Lit. class and ended up writing my final paper on it. My professor for this class used the word "awesome" to describe every book we read--in a 50 minute class period he probably used the word "awesome" at least 10 times. With this book, though, I thought it was really an accurate description. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner was, without a doubt, awesome.

This book is not super plot-heavy. It tells the story of the Compson family, who used to be this really aristocratic Southern family but who have fallen into decline. There are 4 Compson children: Quentin, Caddy, Jason, and Benjy. The book is divided into four sections with four different narrators--the three Compson brothers narrate the first three sections and the fourth is told through third-person narration. Caddy, the only Compson sister, is the only sibling who does not narrate a section, but she ends up being the central focus of the book since all of her brothers are fixated on her.

The first couple of sections in this book are a little confusing because they are a combination of flashbacks and present day, but there's never any clues to when the flashbacks are starting or ending so it's hard to establish a timeline for when things are happening. There's also no clear introductions to characters so as you're reading you're just kind of thrown into what's happening and you have to figure things out for yourself.

All in all, I think this is one of those novels that you either love or hate. The first pages can be pretty frustrating and if you're not willing to work through them you will probably end up being one of the haters of this book. But, if you take your time and push through the confusing parts, the book eventually starts to make sense and you end up loving it. I wish I could use a different word, but I can't...this book is just awesome.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

There's a series of books which all have the title "1001 [Things] You Must [Do] Before You Die". There's quite a few--1001 Movies You Must Watch, 1001 Paintings You Must See, 1001 Wines You Must Drink. The list has grown pretty long. The very first of these books that I encountered was this one:

Being a huge bookworm, I decided almost on the spot to step up to this challenge. I love a good book recommendation and figured that having 1001 of them at my fingertips was worth whatever Amazon was selling them for. Plus, that picture on the cover--it looks like a dream vacation to me.

I've owned this book for about a year and made slight progress--I had read about 40 of these books already and since purchasing my guide I've read about 10 more. Although I'm an English major, I was able to preform a quick calculation which tells me that at the pace of about 10 books a year I will never read everything I'm supposed to before I die (I've already wasted over 20 good years). And so, although it's already January 3rd I decided it's not to late to make a New Year's resolution to make a sizeable dent in the number of books I have left to go. Ideally I'd like to knock off another 25-50--maybe kind of a tall order since 50 books this year means about one a week. But we'll see what I can do.

My plan is to use this blog to keep myself motivated and on track (and of course talk about all the hopefully great books I'll be reading!) My best friend convinced me to start a blog a long time ago, and I have not updated it in almost a year. So I also think it's time I made all her wheedling worthwhile. For the longest time I didn't feel like I had anything noteworthy or interesting to blog about, or I would just feel stuck for ideas on what to write. So now, with a fresh topic and little re-modeling, I think Based On A True Story is ready for a new start. I've taken down all of my old posts (info for anybody that was wondering where they went) because I really want this blog to be more focused and I felt the old posts would drag it down. Also I reread them and thought they all sounded dumb.

Here's hoping this plan not only leads me to become a better reader and a better writer, but also shares interesting books with anybody that happens to be reading along!