Didn’t you read/see American Psycho? The Christian Bale character likes to quote it.
I’m pretty sure the creator of Frasier used to write for GQ, and eventually rebelled.
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I honestly have never understood why so many people seem to like that book so much; by the end, I just wanted to throw the protagonist off that imaginary cliff, personally…
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Because GQ lost the war against the geeks and nerds. We kicked their preppies asses by being hackers and eggheads. They retaliated by giving us brogrammers, but fuck that shit.
They hate our culture, our nerdy love of Tolken, Vonnegut and Kafka. They are trying to out-nerd us by going for the hard-core nerd stuff and telling us our nerdy fun wasn’t nerdy enough.
No, really. Forget that. Read what you fucking want to read, and don’t listen to those striving for coolness. Those guys (rarely if ever gals) are assholes.
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I had an English teacher who was a big Dicken’s fan. I calmly explained to him I found Dickens to be wordy, and painful to read because he would not get to the point.
One day he passed me in the hall while I was reading, and said Moby Dick! Really! I told him it was one of my favorites. I have read it four times in my life.
I have never knew two people who had the same taste in literature.
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PREACH! 
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A long time ago I was reading on the “ classics” plan (English language, eighteenth and nineteenth century novels, not bad stuff, but v Serious), and I unwittingly turned up a cheap copy of Tom Jones. I dutifully picked it up and started reading, and raced through it, thinking it was hilarious that such a raunchy book made it into ye olde canon.
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If your pastor is a rambling bore and gives long sermons about nothing, and your parents aren’t paying attention (or feel your pain), it’s a good time to catch up on the Bible reading. That Eddie Izzard line about the pastor finding the idea for a sermon in a magazine found in a hedge, that’s who we had.
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Oh the travails of an entitled male WASP in training! He rebels against conformity and classism (especially bourgeois pretension) in some nice ways, but i had little faith in the end that such qualities would last in him. Sure, his resistance to growing up was understandable given how hard he’s still taking the loss of his brother, but he seems little aware throughout the book how much easier he has it than most due to plenty of money and social status in his family (not to mention his race, sexuality and gender, his lack of awareness of which, while more forgivable given the setting, were still annoying to me).
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Holden Caulfield, the most punchable fictional little brat in the history of literature.
When someone tells me how much Catcher in the Rye influenced them…
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I only barely made it through the first Gormenghast book.
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I tried in earnest to read Salinger, and Steinbeck, and Hemingway, and really didn’t get much out of any of them.
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Stephen King too wordy? Try Richard Bach!
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I once had a job on a ship at sea, and had the bright idea to read a pile of classics while away. I got through them, and am very thankful for a lot of them - which I might not have read if there was any other option whatsoever at the time. Flann O’Brien’s ‘Third Policeman’ comes to mind.
I am not, however, thankful for the Catcher in the Rye, whom I just wanted to smack - much like I wanted to smack Ferris Bueller.
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I’m rather saddened to see that bafflement at the canonicity of Catcher in the Rye is considered worth trotting out as contrarian rather than commonplace.
If I hadn’t known ahead of time that it was canonical, I would have assumed that i was being trolled by my English teacher.
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They could have just published a “Down with the Four Olds!” poster
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I love Tristram Shandy, but it feels like a reach for a list that considers Freedom horrifically boring. Indeed, Tristram Shandy is likely my favorite book that I haven’t finished, despite having started it - with great enjoyment - numerous times.
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That’s why I absolutely think it should be read beside a non-religious commentary of some kind - when I was a kid, all I had was Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, which had its annoying blind spots and omissions, but was vastly better than nothing. Now that we have the Internet I am sure there are much better resources out there for such a project.
The new Testament should absolutely be read in chronological order of composition - Paul’s letters first, John last-ish.
Sadly trying to do that with the Old Testament gets you mired down in reading a few pages, skipping a chunk, and reading a few more pages, since so many of the OT books are Frankensteined hodgepodges of texts of different ages jammed together and given a very cursory edit.
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Steinbeck was a mixed bag for me; I liked stuff like the Pearl and Of Mice & Men, but I hated East of Eden and the Grapes of Wrath.
I’ve never really cared for any of Hemingway’s work, despite all the acclaim over it.
The Bachman Books are overrated.
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If you like Catch-22, you might want to check out Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk, the satirical novel which directly influenced it.
Švejk isn’t as good as Catch - the theory is that Hašek wrote most of the novel drunk, which is why it’s a disjointed mess, and unfinished to boot. But it’s still great fun to read about the absurdities of World War I.
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Try Fanny Hill! I had picked up a cheap used copy because I often enjoy literature of that era and had vaguely heard it had a reputation for being “naughty.” Thinking it would be a sort of pearl-clutching, giggles-behind-the-arras naughtiness, I took it with me to read on the bus one day. I actually blushed!
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