House on Mango Street #1

This is a very odd book, and not particularly interesting. SO far I'm on page 30, and all it is is a woman explaining her poor neighborhood that she moved into. Each chapter is really short, only about two pages, gives very specific details. For example, she talks about a man who owns a pawn shop, and who won't sell her a record player because it is special. Pointless little anecdotes like that are what make this book very odd and non-engaging. I also don't know why the author seems to try and using her writing as a pity experiment with the readers. Everything is based around the fact that she lives in a poor neighborhood, and that life is so hard for her and everyone around her, ut it is just sorry after story of awful situations and is really unnecessary. It also has no defined plot which makes it just keep going on and on with n logical ending in sight. Maybe I'm not reading into it enough, and maybe it will get better, but right now I'm a bit disappointed that this book has such rave reviews when it is so uninteresting.

second post

The books ending was a bit odd compared to what the rest of it was like. The bulk of the book had a lot of just holden complaining about his situation and essentially how bad his life was. Then, in the last three chapters, it turned into a right of passage situation. First, Holden's former teacher Mr. Antolini tries to sympathize with Holden and get him to like school, so that he would realize more people understand his situation than he gives credit. Also, when he goes to the zoo with his sister and he begins to cry when he sees her on the carousel, it is demonstrating his right of passage, giving up childish things for adult behavior.

The thing that seemed most interesting in this book was all of the old terms from the forties that aren't used anymore, such to get a "bang" out of something, which is the same as getting a kick out of something or enjoying it. This site provides some really good examples of the way eople talked from the 1920s to the 1940's.

http://www.kimcox.org/slang.htm

Catcher in the Rye - first post

The book so far is pretty good. The main character, Holden, started out pretty interesting essentially making a joke out of everything people thought was important, like the big football game during the year. He has started to get pretty annoying though, because it's like everything anyone says or does gets him really annoyed, or "kills him" to hear it or whatever. He also really hates phony's, or people that act that way, but it really seems like he is the one that's full of it all the time, and is far too arrogant for his situation.

The other characters besides Holden aren't particularly interesting to me. For example, Stradlater, Holden's roommate is just the typical high school kid who gets all the girls, but that's it. His life outside of making himself look good is just lame and unexciting. Ackley, a kid in Holden's dorm, is just hard to listen to when he talks. He is overly arrogant, and does not care about anyone but himself, but he still does not provide very much that is worth talking about. So overall, the other character's in the book are not too interesting.