I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody.



Recently, I got (or rather, exploited) my sis once again to help me buy books. Two books this time round: The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger & Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.

Shuddap, i know i haven't read Memoirs of a Geisha and i'm really ashamed of it ok?

Anyway, The Catcher in the Rye is my favourite book of all time now. I wouldn't recommend it to people who thinks life sucks already, you'll just commit suicide after reading this book or take a knife at kill any phonies.

Gosh, this book killed me. Look! I'm already pretending I'm Holden Caufield! No la, I'm not. It's such a depressing book that it took me so long to stop really thinking about it. And everytime I tell anyone about this book, I fall back into a depression. It's that powerful.

So in order to avoid getting into depression again, i shall copy and paste the synopsis from Amazon.com instead of writing it myself.

FROM AMAZON.COM: In J.D. Salinger's brilliant coming-of-age novel, Holden Caulfield, a seventeen year old prep school adolescent relates his lonely, life-changing twenty-four hour stay in New York City as he experiences the phoniness of the adult world while attempting to deal with the death of his younger brother, an overwhelming compulsion to lie and troubling sexual experiences.

Salinger, whose characters are among the best and most developed in all of literature has captured the eternal angst of growing into adulthood in the person of Holden Caulfield. Anyone who has reached the age of sixteen will be able to identify with this unique and yet universal character, for Holden contains bits and pieces of all of us. It is for this very reason that The Catcher in the Rye has become one of the most beloved and enduring works in world literature.

As always, Salinger's writing is so brilliant, his characters so real, that he need not employ artifice of any kind. This is a study of the complex problems haunting all adolescents as they mature into adulthood and Salinger wisely chooses to keep his narrative and prose straightforward and simple.

This is not to say that The Catcher in the Rye is a straightforward and simple book. It is anything but. In it we are privy to Salinger's genius and originality in portraying universal problems in a unique manner. The Catcher in the Rye is a book that can be loved and understood on many different levels of comprehension and each reader who experiences it will come away with a fresh view of the world in which they live.

A work of true genius, images of a catcher in the rye are abundantly apparent throughout this book.

You know what I really want to do now? I'm really wishing to finish the exams soon, then I'll tell my parents I'm going on an overseas trip with my friends, get some money and go backpacking most probably to Vietnam or China. I want to be alone. I want to meet people. I want to be free from civilization for once.

Like I've said, don't read the book if you think life already sucks. This book will make it much worse. And if you do read it, please, don't buy knifes or guns or ropes within the next one year.

*If-a-body-catch-a-body-comin'-thru-the-rye*,
Johnzzon