The Great Catcher

by Someone Who Borrowed Liberally from SparkNotes

Summary:

The Catcher in the Rye is a story set in 1950s narrated by a boy name Holden Caulfield. Holden Caulfield story begins on the Saturday following the end of classes at the Pencey prep school in Pennsylvania. Holden was expelled from previous schools and was doing terrible at Pencey prep, they informed him that he was being expelled. He decides to leave after a few issues that happened to him at the school. He went to Manhattan, New York three days early from the arrival day that his parents were expecting.

He stayed at the Edmont Hotel. During those 3 days he had an encounter with a stripper, he fell "half in love" with a blonde he met at the hotel's lavender room and ends up meeting with a couple of people from his past. He got drunk on night and ended up telling his sister Phoebe about everything that happened to him and wanted to let her know that he is running away. They meet up the day he leaving, his little sister wanted to go with him but he said no and ended up taking took her to the carousel were he watched her go round and round. At that moment he finally felt happy for the first time, he said he was going to stay and plans to go to a new school.

My opinion on the book:

          I like The Catcher in the Rye because it tells the story of a young adult who sees his surroundings as fake and people as phonies. He believes adulthood is something awful but that being young is better and tries to protect his innocence in some way. I like how they talk about the feelings teenagers go through. I also like how I can relate to Holden in so many ways. It's funny to me to see how Holden struggles between becoming an adult and staying a child. To me I thought the book overall was basically what you had to go through to find yourself.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Summary:

The Great Gatsby is a story set in 1920's narrated by Nick Carraway, who was once Gatsby's neighbor. The books begin with Nick moving to West Egg, long island. There Nick hopes he is successful as a bond salesman. He then travels to meet up with his cousin Daisy Buchanan and her husband Tom, a friend of Nick when he was in college. While visiting his cousin Nick meet Jordyn Baker a professional golfer. Tom is a cheater and he invites Nick to meet his mistress Myrtle Wilson, they hang out and get drunk and an incident happened when Tom breaks Myrtles nose in argument. Nick then turns his attention to his mysterious neighbor, who throws parties for the rich weekly. Nick then gets randomly invited on night and shows up to the party, there he bumped into Jordyn and personally got to meet Mr. Gatsby. During the summer Gatsby and Nick becomes friends and Nick starts seeing Jordyn. Nick and Gatsby goes to the city one day and Nick meets Meyer Wolfshiem one of Gatsby associate.

Nick learns 2 things that day that Mr. Gatsby is link to an organized crime and that Mr. Gatsby and his cousin Daisy had a thing back in the day but Mr. Gatsby ended it because he was in the army and couldn't support her in any way but now he wants to reconnect with her again. They reconnect again through Nick and started their affair. Daisy's husband finds out his wife is cheating on him and later daisy ended up crashing into Myrtle killing her. Myrtle's Husband found out his wife had an affair and that someone killed her wanted revenge and bumped into Tom. Tom told him Mr. Gatsby killed her, Mr. Wilson murdered Mr. Gatsby then killed himself. Nick rearranges Mr. Gatsby funeral but no one seemed to care about his death only a few people showed up. Nick decides he is leaving West Egg and goes to visit Tom for the last time and ends up finding out that Tom was behind Mr. Gatsby's Death. Nick ends the book by saying we are all a little like Gatsby, boats moving up a river, going forward but continually feeling the pull of the past.

My opinion on the book:

The Great Gatsby is my favorite book; I like it how this author displayed the book. The plot of this book is incredible. It's a disappointment how no one in the book got their happy ending and that so much effort was gone to waste. The Great Gatsby had my attention during the whole book. Overall it's an excellent book I would recommend it to anyone.