I finished The Catcher in the Rye and had mixed feelings about the book. The first third or so and the last few chapters were engaging, but the middle of the book lost me a bit. 
 I understand that the book is about this disaffected kid who who is bright but has fallen into a bit of a trap in thinking that everyone else is a phony and that he is the only one who sees through it all. This is, in some sense, a manifestation of the arrogance of youth. Teenagers often think they are wise beyond their years. This element of the book was at first interesting and then somewhat predictable, which I think is what seemed a bit stale in the middle of the story. I felt like I had read some of that middle section before - in The Great Gatsby, in Brideshead Revisited and elsewhere, including in the first third of the book. 
 But in the last chapters, I was re-engaged as this child started to spiral downward with seemingly no one to catch him. I have relatively few maternal instincts, but they were singing out by the end of the book! Fortunately, Holden reached out to his sister, who was not really aware of what was going on, but who reeled him in enough so that he could pull himself back from the edge. 
 It was so apparent that he needed help in processing many things, including his brother's death. I was glad to see that he realized that he had gone too far. I understand the desire to run away and start over, and the notion that everyone else is wrong/fake/dense and just doesn't understand the "truth". The problem with that view is that one person's truth may be another person's excuse or fantasy. 
 Hopefully, Holden will learn that everyone can be considered a phony sometimes - even he was whenever he went to a bar and said he was old enough to drink. We all play little mind games with ourselves sometimes as a coping mechanism - whether it's about justifying something we know we shouldn't do or making ourselves fit in better or soothing a damaged ego, sometimes the only kind words we get are internally spoken. It's like the quote in the other thread - about it taking less character to recognize the faults of others than to tolerate them. Holden has to learn that most people are just doing the best they can ... and so is he. 
 I gave this book a 3.5/5 because it was a good book, but it didn't really take me someplace new.