11/22/63 by Stephen King

11/22/63 by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Good god, this was an amazing book! I can't say for certain that it was the best of his I've ever read, but it may well be. I don't know what all to say, but damn, this book is just one of those that is going to stay in my memory for a while.

A lot of people equate Stephen King with horror (and perhaps the assassination of JFK could properly be regarded as that) but for his true fans, we know that he's far from limited to vampires, werewolves, and immortal extra-dimensional psycho-clown killers. I would say though, that this book, which can be regarded as sci-fi but might also fit into the historical fiction genre, is truly a breakout work, and is as far from horror as he is ever likely to get.

One of the things I have always liked about Stephen King is his ability to write characters. He usually manages to give them unique voices and interesting personalities. He certainly doesn't disappoint this time. Not only that, but the narrative just seems to flow so easily in this book. There's almost always a point in a King book where I wonder where the hell this is going and if all these words are really necessary, but there just doesn't seem to be any wasted space in this one. Not only does the narrative flow, this story is compelling! I rarely get so wrapped up in a book that I really don't want to put it down, but this is one of those times.

As a native Dallasite, this is the first book I've ever read that takes place in my home city, and it's more than amusing to see the names of streets I've driven dozens or hundreds of times. I have been to the 6th floor museum, seen JFK's memorial, and walked around the area. And of course, just driven right by it many times on my way elsewhere. Hell, I've even watched movies in the Texas Theater. Perhaps that makes this book resonate strongly with me because it does seem so real. But I think that any reader should get that feeling to some extent. The assassination of JFK is something that all of us are familiar with to a greater or lesser extent, and the names and places talked about in the book shouldn't seem strange or unknown to most readers. But even more than that, even if this was an entirely fictional book, it's so grounded in reality that it reads as a real event.

A lot of times, Stephen King gets in his own way with his narrative style. In other books (I remember a few particularly annoying instances in The Tommyknockers, my least favorite of his), his self-interruptions are so pervasive that what is meant to heighten feelings of dread and suspension simply destroy the flow of the narrative. King really doesn't do that in this book. Perhaps he likes to say "the past harmonizes" and "the past is obdurate" a bit too often, but even so it doesn't really get annoying.

Lastly, while I'm not entirely sure what a Texas accent sounds like to Mr. King, I am sure that he doesn't write it extremely well. Fortunately it's just words, not sounds, so it's just a source of amusement. The only other thing I noticed is that in a diner, the waitress asks George/Jake if he wants a piece of peach "pie" and I was like, what the hell is diner in Texas doing with peach pie instead of cobbler? Ok, I know there is such a thing, although nobody I know has ever made it for me, and I've never seen peaches made into a pie and I don't think I'd heard of such a thing until I Googled it after reading it in this book, but I can hardly believe that there would be peaches made into a pie in 1960s Texas.

Oh, and in the afterword he says that the Texas Theater is closed. This is not true. You can go there and enjoy some very unique films (indie and foreign) and catch some great live acts.

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Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Neal Stephenson strikes me as one of those writers who sometimes has fantastic (in both senses of the word) ideas but who sometimes has trouble making a really good narrative out of them. One of the things I'm sure many people complain about regarding this book has got to be the overly long explanation of some of the philosophies the characters in the book hold. I'm sure that to the author, it seemed necessary to explain some of these ideas in order for the reader to understand what was happening, but I doubt your average sci-fi reader (especially one willing to tackle a book of this size) really needs that much dialogue dedicated to explaining the mechanics of his plot device.

With that reservation expressed, I must say that I really did enjoy this book. The story really was a good one, and the characters were memorable and I think decently fleshed out. The plot doesn't move along quite as fast as it perhaps should (which is due to the flaw I already criticized) but the story does keep moving. He does have a good plot device and a good story around it. Perhaps not absolutely original, but some of his ideas like the "mathic world" are ones I haven't seen before, and at least interesting enough to bolster the story when it is in its slower parts.

I can't give this four stars because I feel that it did just have too much fluff. The author is prone to explaining too much, and this makes the narrator, Erasmas, seem just stupid sometimes. For example, using a paragraph to explain how a fish-eye lens distorts the image of anything seen right next to it is just too much. There are some other technical explanations that I won't bother detailing here because the author shouldn't have bothered detailing them there. I know not everyone reading this will be quite as familiar with astronomy or spaceflight as I am, but I would think most sci-fi fans who are up to reading this book wouldn't need such things laid out for them in quite such detail.

Final recommendation: read it if you're a big sci-fi or Neal Stephenson fan and you will probably enjoy it enough to make the time spent worthwhile.

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