I don't like horror. But I LOVE Stephen King when he's writing non-horror. Which alas, isn't very often.
The first I read of his was 11/22/1963--soon after it came out. I wanted a story where Kennedy lives. I wanted to see how King handled the time travel. And I'm still amazed with how he can make Maine seem like a really creepy place.
I don't like horror. But I LOVE Stephen King when he's writing non-horror. Which alas, isn't very often.
The first I read of his was 11/22/1963--soon after it came out. I wanted a story where Kennedy lives. I wanted to see how King handled the time travel. And I'm still amazed with how he can make Maine seem like a really creepy place.
I read this book three times. And then November 8, 2016 happened, and I had to distract myself, so I read it again. It's great nostalgia for the time of my youth (I was 10 when JFK was assassinated). It has great romance--and an incredibly romantic ending, which King's son, Joe Hill wrote, when King couldn't quite figure out how to end it. And King bent over backwards to make the history as accurate as possible. A relative of a friend of mine--the woman who got Oswald the job in the book depository--makes a brief appearance. To be sure, King uses horror here and there in the book, but it's a tool. 11/22/1963 is not a horror book.
The time travel involved a worm hole in the diner that inevitably brought the time traveler to a specific day in September 1958, and you could return to the present via that wormhole. If you wanted to undue the changes you'd made to the past, you had to then go back in time again, which would automatically cause the reset.
King also did a great article in the NYer about when he got hit by a van and laid up for considerable time, and his book on writing is terrific. If you want to write a novel, and you're not quite sure how to approach it, get King's On Writing.
I did read two thirds of one of his horror books before putting it down. I can't remember the name of it, but I didn't think it was very good. One of the things that's so good about 11/22/1963 is the characters. I wanted to hang out with them. I wanted to go teach in the small town Texas school where the hero got a teaching job to have something to do while waiting out the years until 11/22/1963, because the people there were such nice characters.
None of the characters in the horror book I read had that effect on me.
I don't like horror. But I LOVE Stephen King when he's writing non-horror. Which alas, isn't very often.
The first I read of his was 11/22/1963--soon after it came out. I wanted a story where Kennedy lives. I wanted to see how King handled the time travel. And I'm still amazed with how he can make Maine seem like a really creepy place.
I read this book three times. And then November 8, 2016 happened, and I had to distract myself, so I read it again. It's great nostalgia for the time of my youth (I was 10 when JFK was assassinated). It has great romance--and an incredibly romantic ending, which King's son, Joe Hill wrote, when King couldn't quite figure out how to end it. And King bent over backwards to make the history as accurate as possible. A relative of a friend of mine--the woman who got Oswald the job in the book depository--makes a brief appearance. To be sure, King uses horror here and there in the book, but it's a tool. 11/22/1963 is not a horror book.
The time travel involved a worm hole in the diner that inevitably brought the time traveler to a specific day in September 1958, and you could return to the present via that wormhole. If you wanted to undue the changes you'd made to the past, you had to then go back in time again, which would automatically cause the reset.
King also did a great article in the NYer about when he got hit by a van and laid up for considerable time, and his book on writing is terrific. If you want to write a novel, and you're not quite sure how to approach it, get King's On Writing.
I did read two thirds of one of his horror books before putting it down. I can't remember the name of it, but I didn't think it was very good. One of the things that's so good about 11/22/1963 is the characters. I wanted to hang out with them. I wanted to go teach in the small town Texas school where the hero got a teaching job to have something to do while waiting out the years until 11/22/1963, because the people there were such nice characters.
None of the characters in the horror book I read had that effect on me.
The book on writing is superb. "The best monsters have their fur on the inside."