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**Nia M** · 22-01-2010, 12:39 AM

Am currently reading The Bell Jar for school, but have gotten my paws on Adam Carter Revealed lately, so I think my studies may be set aside for a while...

**bertowud** · 27-01-2010, 04:04 AM

I guess I'm about to start Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

HellsBells · 27-01-2010, 02:07 PM

I have just finished reading Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab. I have never been a great fan of his in the past, having read Immediate Action. But this book (a true account of his time in the first Iraq war) was really quite good and very interesting. Well worth a read if you like action books.

lwhite53 · 29-01-2010, 12:08 AM

Just heard on the news that JD Salinger died -- a great loss!

**JHyde** · 29-01-2010, 12:14 AM

I saw that, but like so many people I didn't realize he was still kicking. I like 'Catcher in the Rye' but not as much as so many seemed to. I do understand why it became a cult classic though, particularly given the time that it was written.

lwhite53 · (This post was last modified: 29-01-2010 12:16 AM by lwhite53.)

Yeah, the popularity of that book was very much about it's timing. If something similar was written today, it probably wouldn't get published.

**JHyde** · 29-01-2010, 12:20 AM

It's not even that. My sister is younger than I am and she loves it, and I've had several close friends who adored it too. So it's not that, I don't think - although for people in their fifties or older it may be so. It does seem to have a cross generational appeal that's based simply in the fact that sometimes being a teenager is a universal experience, no matter the time or the place.

I just never latched onto it the way some people I know did. It's a book that inspires really strong feelings one way or the other and for anyone going to a trivia quiz any time soon, it was also the book the dude who shot John Lennon was carrying when it happened. Very popular question that may well rear its ugly head again now that Salinger died.

**bertowud** · 29-01-2010, 08:58 PM

It might get published. I suspect it wouldn't get noticed. Fight Club might almost be the Catcher in the Rye of our age.

One of the reasons people didn't realize Salinger was still alive is because he hasn't published anything in forever. Rumor is he has rooms of his house full of unpublished manuscripts.

**JHyde** · (This post was last modified: 30-01-2010 08:33 AM by JHyde.)

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what his will stipulates about what might get published.

A lot of people think Harper Lee is dead but she isn't - she's outlived most of her contemporaries. And she's only published the one, incredible book. Although she has been a lifelong essayist.

As someone who's been a writer since the age of about 7 but very rarely shown her stuff to people, I really do understand, although obviously I'm not even anywhere near close to the class of Salinger or Lee.

**bertowud** · 30-01-2010, 06:57 AM

And there's of course the question of whether or not she wrote it. There has been speculation for years that Truman Capote actually wrote or at least may have co written To Kill a Mockingbird.