Another week sees another physio acupuncture session and a much better recovery!
Back feels a lot better, I have more movement a lot less pain. This latter improvement especially has made this week 100% better than last week. Things are looking up even more this week as I have all of next week off!! I had some holiday I had to before April so I decided to have a whole week off instead of spreading them over a longer period and having them in twos and threes.
I already have a list as long as my arm of things that I would like to do but it is highly likely that I will end up doing only a few of the items on the list and will just relax, chill and read my books.
As for the book total. It has increased by 2. Thanks to my friend who thinks I have a problem with collecting books.... hmm, interesting development.
All this brings the total of books to be read to: 118.
However, I have been reading quite a bit in the past week and as the weather was a bit pants this weekend I managed to get through 2 books since my last post! I have even started another one but as that is about 600 pages it may take me a little while to finish that one.
#### SPOILER ALERT ####
11.22.63 - Stephen King
What can I say about this one? Well... I loved it and it is very different from what I am used to from SK.
It has a supernatural element in the fact that it is about time travel but that element is almost side-lined overall and it seems to be a story that is more about people, relationships and how they affect the world around them. It is also one of those ones that is hard to put down. Almost from the start you want to know what happens next with the main characters. I guess that that is in part due to the fact that we would all like to know what would happen if the past really could be changed. The book has got a good pace and it flows well and it has plenty of excitement. I find that in this one King is really good at setting up and defining his characters. It is kind of like he knows we are going to be spending some time with them so he has made them recognisable, likeable and fleshed out. The main ones especially have a past that affects them still and brings some excitement and movement to the story. the bad guys are kind of your average bad guy.... although some are a bit more twisted than others.
Then there is the "curve ball" in the story. The story takes off in one direction and then something happens that changes it around and it hooks you in even further. So.. before you know it you find yourself staying up till 22.00 to finish the book and maligning him for it in the morning... or was that just me?
At the start of the book we meet Jake Epping a teacher at the local school. A man who does not cry easily and at the start you wonder why that is important. He has an okay job and an alcoholic ex-wife. The mrs finally took herself off to AA, fell into the arms of a new husband and now seems to blame Jake fore it all. Jake was left to his own devices and you get the feeling that that is fine by him. Jake seems to be set in his ways and does not expect much of life but to be allowed to teach his kids and live his life in peace. The one thing that has made him cry recently is a story that one of his mature students writes about his horrible childhood. Then for some reason his life gets turned upside down by Al. Al is the owner of the local diner that Jake loves to visit. All is not well with Al. Al seems to have gotten really ill really suddenly and asks Jake to help him. The story that Al has to tell is amazing and hard to believe. Once Al starts his tale you get swept away as Jake is. Bring on the weird time ravel stuff, a bit of murderous intent, and an amazing story about changing the past, cause and effect and more importantly... people. There is love, loss, pain and suffering, murder, redemption and understanding.
Al's secret is that he has found a time portal in the back of his diner (as you do). He has been going back and forth between the past and the present for some time. The portal brings him to September 9, 1958.... at 11.58. It seems to Al that no matter how often he uses it it seems that every time he goes back the past has reset itself and it is like he was never there. Another strange thing about the time portal is that every time you go into the past, no matter how much time you spend in the past it will always bring you back 2 minutes after you left the present. Al has been going back and forth for some time now... and he has a plan! He believes that he needs to save the world from itself and that the one pivotal event that he needs to prevent from happening is the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. Al is a man who believes in being prepared and has lots of notes about the events surrounding the assassination so Jake can relax up to a point but there are still plenty of challenges ahead for him.
Jake... or should we say George, decides to take the plunge and is a somewhat reluctant visitor of the past at first. He takes an almost scientific approach to the whole time travel experience. For Jake seeing is believing. He sets out to test Al's theory of the past and how changes we make in the past affect the future. As Jake finds out for himself there are some things that do not seem to want to be changed and it takes some doing to put things right... and even then... In the end Jake buys into Al's plans for the past and agrees to do his bit for history. This is where the true journey starts for Jake. He takes himself back to 1958 and has to fill the 5 years to the Kennedy assassination. I am not going to go into everything that Jake does, fixes and experiences but I have to mention Sadie.
Sadie is the kind of woman we all know. Slightly uncomfortable with herself, a bit clumsy, seems to be pre-occupied by something that happened to her at some time. Jake meets her whilst he is biding his time in a small town and she becomes the most important thing in his life. She is one that almost makes him stay in the past. It is interesting to see Jake grow throughout the story. He seems at odds with the past at the start but he becomes so comfortable with it that he even thinks of staying there at one point. In all this Sadie is his saviour, his link to the past, his hope for the future and the one person who he is able to tell some of what he is up to. Sadie has a past and this past haunts her and hunts her down as well (as you kind of expect it to). In all this it is a nice contradiction that with all his knowledge of the future Jake is still powerless to prevent harm from coming to the one he loves most.
You get to spend a lot of time with Jake and he is a very well thought out character. He is balanced, level headed and kind. He seems to want to belong and he does for a while. Yet, he also has a dark side to him. A side that makes him able to kill, lie and do what is needed to safeguard the future... or so he thinks. The other characters that you meet are well written as well. Al is the kind of guy you would like to run you local diner. Sadie is a lively although slightly accident prone lady. Miz Mimi is hilariously brazen and full a fight and life. Deke and Ellie and the sound pillars of the community that you expect to live in the sleepy town of Jodie.
With this book you actually get a few stories for the price of one.
There is the whole time travel aspect of the story. The most important lesson here seems to be that what you think is going to happen does not always happen. Life has a way of doing what it wants and you can try to give it direction as much as you like but there are so many things that influence the way life and society develops that it is near impossible to predict how your actions will affect the future.
Then there is the part that deals with Jake preventing the assassination of Kennedy. This brings in Lee Harvey Oswald and his family. It tells the story of the man who killed Kennedy from a different and very interesting angle... perhaps a more human angle than we are used from in the history books.
There is the story of Jake who changes from a teacher without a cause to a teacher with a cause and a family, and a home, and a sense of belonging.
And last but not least we have the love story of Jake and Sadie... which is both moving and tragic. It is filled with love and loss and. most importantly trust.
In the last chapters you do get some kind of explanation of how the whole time travel things works. However, to be honest by that time I did not really care too much about the mechanics of time travel strands of time and cause and effect. I was much more interested in what Jake was going to do in the end. Stay in the past or choose the present. In the end that is the strength of the book and the story. You want to know what happens to the main character and want him to be happy, whatever choice he makes... and he is.
Title: 11.22.63
Author: Stephen King
740 pages
Hodder
ISBN nr 978-1-444-72733-3
Books to be read: 117
No comments:
Post a Comment