J.D. Salinger and The Catcher in the Rye 

I had heard of The Catcher in the Rye for years before I ever read it. I just kind of lumped its title in there with those of a thousand other books I was never going to read, like Silas Marner and Moby Dick. I didn't know anything about the book, but for some reason the title didn't sound good to me.

Sometime in my early teenage years, I finally picked up Catcher in the Rye and sped through it. While I enjoyed it, I wasn't immediately consumed by it. When I read it again a couple of years later, however, things fell into place.

While A Confederacy of Dunces endeared me by making me laugh hysterically, The Catcher in the Rye reeled me in by using other emotions. Each time I read the book, I identified with Holden Caulfield more and more. Eventually, I felt like I knew exactly what Holden was saying on every page.

Forces conspired to make me put aside my obsession with Catcher in the Rye a few years ago. First of all, it got to be a little painful. I mean, it's not a very happy book, and I was identifying with Holden way too much. Secondly, I became aware that it might not be too wise to carry my Catcher in the Rye fanaticism too far into adulthood -- didn't want to end up like Mark Chapman or John Hinckley, Jr., the guys who shot John Lennon and Ronald Reagan, respectively.

For some reason, I didn't seek out Salinger's other writings. Recently, I've read a few of his short stories, but they didn't grab me in the same way that The Catcher in the Rye did.

In the early '90s, however, I was seized with a new obsession -- one in which one book was not sufficient to satisfy my urges. I had to seek out others ...