2026 Q3: 11/22/63 by Stephen King > Likes and Comments
date
newest »
newest »
Got it. On my tbr list straight after Asimov and a physical book I'm reading right now for my blog review. Back soon.
I’m about 44% in. Unlike The Stand, the last tome we read by Stephen King … which I did not like at all, this has been an easy, enjoyable read that seems to keep me pretty engaged. So, there is time travel. Not a spoiler if you read the publishers summary. There is no gadget or invention, so is it a technothriller? Not by my typical definition. Thriller? Yes, I suppose, at times, though it’s not fast paced. The topic of time travel does or at least can explore the cause and effect of things or events in our world, which I think is a large part of the appeal to us. It doesn’t belabor time travel bits too much. It seems more of a vehicle to stage an ode to the late 1950s/early 1960s, like Ready Player One was an ode to the late 1970s/early 1980s. It’s a good book so far.
11/22/63 by Stephen King (2011)
Pages: 849 | Rated: 4.35 | Ratings: 682K
Why? A sci-fi thriller about time travel, JFK’s murder, and a Goodreads Choice Sci-Fi award winner of 2011.
Publisher’s Summary
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand page tour de force.
Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment—a real life moment—when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.
Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.
Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.
A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.