I think what makes it hard is that all of the characters are hard to like: they're really shallow and up their own butts that it's hard to connect with them. Which, I know, is the point Fitzgerald is trying to make on the '20's flapper culture.

I absolutely hated Rye; but you share the same mindset that all my classmates shared--that it's somehow this "forbidden" book and we're so cool reading it. My parents couldn't have cared less that I had to read it. (Probably it helped that I complained about the book, they didn't have to be worried about me getting "ideas" from it!)