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Reading lists

20 books everyone should read before they’re 20

A list of the best YA books ever, from Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses to Melvin Burgess' Junk

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The 10 greatest YA books ever written

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Features

Matt Salinger wants to put the record straight

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The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

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Where to start reading J. D. Salinger’s books

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Quiz: Which J.D. Salinger book should you read?

Franny and Zooey

A sharp and poignant snapshot of the crises of youth - from the acclaimed author of The Catcher in the Rye 
 
'Everything everybody does is so - I don't know - not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and - sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.' 
 
First published in the New Yorker as two sequential stories, 'Franny' and 'Zooey' offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger's fictional Glass family. 
 
'Salinger's masterpiece' Guardian

J. D. Salinger was born in 1919 and died in January 2010. He grew up in New York City and wrote short stories from an early age, but his breakthrough came in 1948 with the publication in the New Yorker of 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish'. The Catcher in the Rye was his first and only novel, published in 1951. It remains one of the most translated, taught and reprinted texts, and has sold over 65 million copies worldwide. He went on to write three further, critically acclaimed, best-selling works of fiction: Franny and Zooey, For Esmé - With Love And Squalor and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour - An Introduction. Salinger continued to write throughout his life and left behind a large body of unpublished work.

Franny Glass and Lane Coutell are the perfect campus couple: beautiful, intelligent, their whole lives ahead of them. But on the weekend of the big game, when Franny comes to visit, something goes wrong and tensions begin to surface. 
 
Franny's older brother is Zooey. They come from a sophisticated and highly eccentric family: all seven Glass siblings are former child stars, each in their own way charismatic and yet damaged. And when Franny's anxiety spirals into a more serious breakdown, Zooey is the only one who might be able to reach her. 
 
A novel in two intertwining stories, Franny and Zooey brilliantly captures the emotional strains and ruptures of entering adulthood. Enduringly resonant, incisive and expansive in both sense of that word, it is unmistakeably the work of a master.

And Other Stories

For Esmé - with Love and Squalor

A collection of nine exceptional stories from the acclaimed author of The Catcher in the Rye 
 
'This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I'm still around, but from here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, I've disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me.' 
 
This collection of nine stories includes the first appearance of J. D. Salinger's fictional Glass family, introducing Seymour Glass in the unforgettable 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish'. 
 
'The most perfectly balanced collection of stories I know' Ann Patchett

An American soldier has a strange encounter with an orphaned English teenager the night before he leaves for war. A four-year-old boy runs away from home in a dinghy. A missionary's child is kidnapped by Chinese bandits. A honeymoon in Florida goes awry with tragic consequences. 
 
 Including the first stories to feature J. D. Salinger's beloved Glass family characters, this brilliantly varied collection offers a vivid introduction to the work of one of the most admired and widely read American novelists of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane and frequently affecting, For Esmé - with Love and Squalor is a gem to be passed down for many generations to come.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; Seymour - an Introduction

A haunting portrait of family tragedy from the acclaimed author of The Catcher in the Rye 
 
'He was a great many things to a great many people while he lived, and virtually all things to his brothers and sisters in our somewhat outsized family. Surely he was all real things to us: our blue-striped unicorn, our double-lensed burning glass, our consultant genius, our portable conscience, our supercargo, and our one full poet...' 
 
These two novellas, set seventeen years apart, are both concerned with Seymour Glass - the eldest son of J. D. Salinger's fictional Glass family - as recalled by his closest brother, Buddy. 
 
'The Glasses are one of the liveliest, funniest, most fully-realized families in all fiction' The New York Times

In May of 1942, Buddy Glass, second son of the eccentric Glass family, comes home on leave from military service. He is back in New York City to attend the wedding of his eldest brother, Seymour. But the celebration is overcast by a sense of suspended weight, a strange and muted dread. Perhaps everyone is aware, on some level, of what is to come. And in the years after the tragedy, Buddy is haunted by memories of Seymour, turning over in his mind everything that came to pass with his unhappy older brother. 
 
In two communicating stories from his acclaimed Glass series, J. D. Salinger unfolds a subtle and poignant story of family tragedy.

The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but it's relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the 'phony' aspects of society, and the 'phonies' themselves: the headmaster whose affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection. 
 
Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it's a novel whose interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at all). Salinger's style creates an effect of conversation, it is as though Holden is speaking to you personally, as though you too have seen through the pretences of the American Dream and are growing up unable to see the point of living in, or contributing to, the society around you. 
 
Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the clutch of a cliche.

J. D. Salinger

I liked it very much indeed, more than anything for a long time.

As captivating, bold and transgressive as ever. . . Encountering the first sentence of The Catcher in the Rye made the world burst into colour. It had never occurred to me that writing could make your blood fizz with delight . . . What’s most remarkable about the book is how it alters its meanings depending on the reader’s age. Only the greatest novels manage this alchemy. The Catcher is in the same league as Ulysses or The Handmaid’s Tale in having built into its texture a perpetual self-regeneration

It's Christmas and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school. Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters - shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. 
 
The city is beautiful and terrible in all its lonesome neon glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning. 
 
The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic coming-of-age story: an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J. D. Salinger

Books by J. D. Salinger

Articles featuring J. D. Salinger

20 books everyone should read before they’re 20

The 10 greatest YA books ever written

Matt Salinger wants to put the record straight

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Where to start reading J. D. Salinger’s books

Quiz: Which J.D. Salinger book should you read?

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