The Catcher in the Rye

Celebrate "the freedom to read" during the ALA's Banned Books Week. This annual event is designed to draw attention to books that have faced bans and challenges in regional areas around the US. With these challenges on the rise, it's ever more important to stand against literary censorship.

Spring is in the air, and with the season comes a feeling of new growth, fresh starts, and regeneration. In the literary world, beloved coming-of-age books evoke similar feelings of change. These bildungsromans are often centered around a protagonist and highlight their experiences during their formative years. They are tales of growth, maturity, and enlightenment.

It was 74 years ago on January 31, when J. D. Salinger’s short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish appeared in The New Yorker. The story introduces Seymour Glass, a recurring character in many of Salinger’s subsequent stories along with his large quirky family. Here we share more about the author and his favorite subjects.

The New York Times Book Review turned 125 years old. To celebrate their momentous anniversary and their dedicated readership, they asked their readers to nominate the best books of the past 125 years. They took thousands of nominations down to 25 finalists, then that finalist down to one winner.

In celebration of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), ThriftBooks enlisted OnePoll to survey 2,000 Americans about their novel-writing (and reading!) tendencies and we uncovered a pretty interesting story. Here are a handful of our key plot points.