> Catcher in the Rye and On the Road are two books I was looking forward to reading (not being English-based meant I didn't get to read them on high school) and found dull.
I feel the same way about Catcher in the Rye. I didn't grow up with it and when I picked it up as an adult I found it dull dull dull. I'm pretty sure that with enough digging one might find something interesting here, but it's buried too deep for me. Much like anything by James Joyce, this seems to be a book for Lit majors.
Catcher in the Rye is an adult book written for juveniles, and I mean that in the best possible way. It is about profound realization we all have at some point that adults are not the grown-ups we think them to be, but rather - as I've heard expressed well recently - adults are merely big children that have left the sandbox. Or in Holden's words, phonies.
I think this still is a profound and powerful book for anyone reading it at the appropriate point in their life, usually the last year or two of high school. If you are familiar with post-war American culture of the 1950's, then you can also appreciate on a literary and historical level its counter-cultural message.
But otherwise, if you're encountering Catcher in the Rye for the first time having already become a grown-up adult, I wouldn't expect much of it.
I feel the same way about Catcher in the Rye. I didn't grow up with it and when I picked it up as an adult I found it dull dull dull. I'm pretty sure that with enough digging one might find something interesting here, but it's buried too deep for me. Much like anything by James Joyce, this seems to be a book for Lit majors.