I'm right there with you, man. I never read Catcher, but everything I've heard about it just makes me never want to.
Of course, it's always nice when an author takes the time to plot out their world meticulously and has vivid, awesome characters, but the world can honestly take a backseat. That's one of the reasons I like the movie In The Name Of The King so much. Apart from the star-studded cast (almost none of whom will actually admit to being in that movie), I know nothing about Dungeon Siege. But the characters are so vibrant and alive and well-acted that it just draws me in every time.
Which is particularly shocking given that Uwe Boll directed it, but everyone gets at least one really good story, I suppose.
If you dig through enough piles of shit, you always eventually hit a gold nugget, however small. That's why Michael Bay directed/wrote one of the best and well-known commercials of all time (the original "got milk" commercial) and yet produces a lot of flaming garbage nearly exclusively.
But yeah, Catcher in the Rye actually IS a book you need to read. Not because it's good, because it really objectively isn't, but because it perfectly describes the precise antithesis to the pulp-rev movement and gives a frightening look into what the future would look like without superversive fiction.
I honestly don't know if I have the stomach for it. I know it's a stunning example of how not to write an entertaining book, but I have enough examples of entertaining fiction to keep me interested. Not only that, but I've also read plenty of litfic nonsense, even a bunch masquerading as scifi/fantasy/adventure fiction, so I know exactly what that world looks like. It's a horrifying place, and one I'm personally working to move us away from as far as possible.
#NoMoreBoringStories