Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger

This is my second book of Salinger's after Catcher in the Rye. I heard that readers either love it or hate it. Well at the end of the review, i guess you will know which side i am in. I must be very frank here, i could not relate to the characters and was very bored with the conversations. It seemed like one of the principle character Franny was having adolescent problems and her older brother Zooey is helping her out to figure out her identity. But these 'bright' kids had a weird upbringing. They were exposed to varied religious principles at a very young age by their other two much older brothers. The entire book consists of sequences ..one between Franny and her boyfriend( introducing Franny and her confusions), Zooey reading elder brother buddy's addressed to him ( giving background of Zooey and Franny), Zooey and Mother, Zooey and Franny. Lot of long conversations here and there which can sometimes lead to a 'so what' 'yeah what else' feeling...Usually when i read a book, i feel good about it if it makes me think about the subjects or the plot or even the place in which it is based...But then i was just glad this book was over...

Now for few words i learnt from the book :

Panetela :

Spanish root. a long slender cigar

From the book : He had been smoking them since he was sixteen, and regularly, as many as a dozen a day-expensive panatelas, for the most part-since he was eighteen.

Incestuous:

Improperly intimate or interconnected
Example : "Press-politics relations are notoriously incestuous"
From the book : There in almost incestuously close juxtaposition, seven scrapbooks of newspaper and magazine clippings had been bracketed, at the bindings, directly into the plaster.

Vaudevillian:
A person who does theatrical performance of the nature of a variety show by profession.

Inveterate:
Latin root. in a habitual and longstanding manner
From the book: The children's father, a former international vaudevillian and no doubt, an inveterate and wistful admirer of the wall decor at Sardi's theatrical restaurant.