Something that bums me out is that I kinda missed the boat on Catcher in the Rye because I read it for the first time just a few years late. I never read it until I was 20 or so; I was always a pretty mature and responsible kid and was in college at the time. I found Holden so whiny, pretentious, and plain annoying. At the time I wished I had read it when I was 16 or so, as I probably would have identified with Holden's angstiness a lot more at that time.

I read it again more recently and sympathized a lot more with him, which probably had a lot to do with the revelation to me that Holden seems to be on the autism spectrum and feels very misunderstood, making his angst much more understandable and sort of justified in my mind.

I'm a HS English teacher and am looking forward to reading this book with some 11th graders later this year and seeing how different students respond to it/Holden as a character.