Whats your favourite book and why?

[Rev. Rye]

I gotta ask: what's the deal with"the catcher in the rye"?
I "read" the audiobook and it seemed to be a silly story of an idiot teenager... Or is my European bias showing?

The thing with Catcher in the Rye is that people tend to identify with Holden Caulfield. As a fan, I strongly did (and to some extent, still do) identify with Holden's bitterness and his exasperation with a phony society (and it just gets more and more phony), but, of course, when you're older, you start to see things with some sort of distance and you can appreciate his flaws, that he's really not a paragon, but really as much of a product of the phony society as everyone else.

For just one example, see this appreciation in the New Republic, written in the wake of Salinger's death, which expounds on it and is as good as any explanation as I've ever heard.