  I found Catcher in the Rye to be a bit scary too once I realized that Holden was really mentally unstable. My paper was a parody on Holden and I just hope Mrs. VA won't be too disturbed by the "creativity" of my imagination in this paper.
It was actually really fun to explore the thoughts of a potential character like that, I could draw a lot for my writing from my guy-friends and their thoughts that they express verbally, I think I could write a whole book just in that kind of a colloquial style, exploring the different ideas people have in their mind during the day. I ran our of my reading mood, so Their Eyes were Watching God is only half finished for now, but so far my reaction to it is: men are sexist and generally evil, with rare exceptions.
That is of course an exaggeration but the feeling I get from the book so far is that men find a girl, get what they want from her, that is love and attachment and then either get bored and move on to another "victim" or exploit the already used and hypnotised girl to fullest potential. I just couldn't believe it how Janie's first husband first begged her to marry him and then went to by her a mule so that she could plow his fields. The same with her second husband Jody who first says: "you behind a plow! You ain't got no mo' business wid uh plow than uh hog is got wid uh holiday! ... A pretty dall-baby lak you is made to sit on de front porch and rock and fan yo'self and eat p'taters dat other folks plant just special for you. " It's ridiculous how he very soon placed her behind the counter of his shop and scoundreled her for miscounting.
I just wouldn't believe the swift change from adornment to "... you [Janie] need tellin'. Somebody got to think for women and chillun and chickens and cows. I god, they sho don't think none theirselves. " I just love the comparison between women and chickens, no wonder the word "chicks" addressed toward girls is still in the lexicon.
I want to finish the book though, maybe Tea Cake will bring some optimistic news about the race of men and will lower down my cynicism. I was just wondering if anyone has any ideas about the significance of Janie's beautiful hair and the crazy mule running around. Call me a nerd but I love Harry Potter books, they are just so beyond imagination it's fascinating. They inspire me to write something like that too, only it's hard to come up with new ideas for a story; I think I am going to go think about some potentially successful ideas for a plot, maybe that will get me into Harvard, or at least I could make millions of dollars selling the books and then just bribe the admisions officers;) I think the movies are not that great though.
Lord of the Rings series were better and closer to the actual book. These kinds of books are just fun to read in order to get away from the ordinary world, afterall it gets really boring here sometimes and they don't take that long to read becuase they have such straigh-forward ideological content: the good always wins, yet I have to agree with Pat that they are a bit stricky in the story line. I am still struggling with Fountainhead though, that book is insane, the more I read of it the harder it becomes and the more I want to read it. 
