Why did I put myself through that?
I had to read this book for school two years ago and was not able to get through it because of how bad it was and I didn't have enough time to push myself to finish it. I decided to retry it now because I figured it could not be as bad as I remembered. It was not, it was even worse. Holden is the most pretentious, annoying, ungrateful protagonist that I have ever had the displeasure of reading. He spent the entire novel complaining about phonies and pretentious a**holes, while he is the biggest one of all. For some reason, his reckless and stupid actions bugged me even more than his hypocrisy. Don't put yourself through the painful experience of reading it if you don't have to. I certainly won't ever again.
