The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger

I just finished this book,

I'm coming to it rather late -- it was published in 1951and has been famous ever since.  (Do younger people know it now?)

Since first publication, it's been famous for a variety of reasons.

• as an astonishing first novel
• as the work of an obscure author who retreated to the country and wrote little else
• as an expose of modern (post-WWII) kids
• as a dirty book unsuitable  for the teenagers it porported to depict, and thus a book time and again banned by school boards, mainly in North America.
• as a source of slang and swear words

I heard a lot about The Catcher in the Rye as a teenager but never was required to read it, or forbidden to read it.  I didn't read high prestige books of that sort; I read science fiction.

But now I've read it, and you know what?  It's very good.