It's Tuesday.

Therefore IDOL!!!!!

Adam Lambert is the most amazing person to come out of that show, and you know how much I love David Cook. I have a wall of David.

I would like to clarify that I will never have a wall of Adam, but I most likely would have voted for Adam if he was on last season, while secretly stock piling pictures of David Cook.

Oh Wow! I am a dork. But seriously, Adam Lambert soooo amazing.

Today I argued with my writing teacher over The Catcher in the Rye. Over whether or not it is a book about a teenager forced upon teens, or a book for teenagers, forced upon them by teachers who think it will be good for them.

Now I love Holden Caulfied and all of his messed up ways and wanting to know about the ducks peeks my interest, but honestly, its a book aimed toward adults. In 1951 there wasn't a teen fiction genre. And today, because the protagonist is a sixteen year old boy wondering around NYC, and because it was forced upon them as sixteen year olds, English teacher make us read it.

I didn't get it when I was 16, I didn't get anything when I was 16, I still wanted Harry and Hermione to get together when I was 16 (talk about confused!). To have to think about and analyze the life of a kid as messed up as Holden was 50 or 60 years ago is almost too much for a kid today to do. Not saying that teenagers as a whole are stupid (I just don't want them in my cafe eating my food when I have to go to class in a half hour), in fact most teenagers are smarter than many people believe. I have cousins, they way smarter than I was when I was their age.


My teacher wouldn't listen to my argument, because the first thing I said was "John Green said in an article in the Indy Star..." (linkage:http://www.indy.com/posts/meet-novelist-screenwriter-youtube-sensation-john-green)

I thought that having a, you know, award winning author back up my statements would make what i was saying better, but I honestly should have known better. He thinks that my reading view is strictly on John Green and Maureen Johnson, because that's what I've been reading lately (and because of John's videos I feel like I know him kind of).

I've read the classic "teen" books and I think they are missing what the more modern ones have, like that connection between what is happening in the characters life to the teens life. So much happened to Holden it's almost too much to take, but then someone like Margo Roth Spiegelman or Ginny in Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes has just enough complicated in their life that it connects more the reader, makes us want to know more.

Holden Caufield has this, but not for a 16 year old. It took me three times reading it before I got the big parts of the symbolism and themes and stuff.

I'm not trying to say The Catcher in the Rye is a bad book. It's a great book, a classic coming-of-age novel. BUT we shouldn't be forced to read it by teachers. It ruins the book.