11/22/63 in Crazy Challenge Connection

Mar 09, 2013 Book Concierge rated it really liked it

Shelves: own, historical-fiction, books-about-books, audio, library, concierge, strong-women, 20th-century, texas

Audio book performed by Craig Wasson, with an afterword by the author.
4****

Jake Epping is a high-school English teacher, who also teaches adults seeking their GEDs. One of those adults is Harry Dunning, the school janitor, who is obviously “slow” and walks with a limp. The essay he writes describing the “The Day That Changed My Life” stuns Jake. So when his friend Al Templeton reveals that there is a portal to the past in his pantry – a “rabbit hole” that will take the traveler back to Sept 9, 1 Audio book performed by Craig Wasson, with an afterword by the author.
4****

Jake Epping is a high-school English teacher, who also teaches adults seeking their GEDs. One of those adults is Harry Dunning, the school janitor, who is obviously “slow” and walks with a limp. The essay he writes describing the “The Day That Changed My Life” stuns Jake. So when his friend Al Templeton reveals that there is a portal to the past in his pantry – a “rabbit hole” that will take the traveler back to Sept 9, 1958 at 11:58 a.m. – Jake decides to try to change Harry Dunning’s history. But Al has a larger, more important, historical event in mind; he just has to convince Jake to take it on.

The cover art and the title really tell the reader up front that the focus of this novel will be the Kennedy assassination. But King takes his sweet time getting there. Jake will have to live in the past from Sept 9, 1958 to Fall 1963 if he’ll have any chance to stop Oswald (or whoever it was who pulled the trigger, or conspired to do so). Among other things, he’ll have to actually determine whether Oswald was acting alone, or was just the “patsy” he claimed to be. But in those intervening years, Jake will find work and will meet and come to care for a variety of people – students, fellow teachers, neighbors, and one very special librarian.

I’ll admit I was a bit frustrated that it took King so long to get to the critical events of November 1963. I knew he had to have a good reason for this, but I wasn’t seeing it and I grew impatient. This is NOT to say that the book is slow. Far from it. King is a master at pacing a thriller to keep the reader turning pages. But if he told me one more time that “the past is obdurate” … well I was going to have to throw something at the CD player. However, I grew to care about all the events Jake experienced long before he got to Dallas. From the slang used to the fashions of the day and on to the small details, such as the price of gasoline, King immerses the reader in the “land of ago” and gives us a chance to recognize how very different that time was from 2011. He forces us to think about “what might have been” and “where might we be today” if only …

However convoluted and long the journey, I’m glad I went along. I was in tears (yes, in a Stephen King novel!) at the end of Chapter 31. I really wish he had ended it there. This is a novel that cries out for an ambiguous ending. The last chapter – Citizen of the Century – seemed like an afterthought, and while it was nice to have some of the loose ends tied up, for this reader the impact of Chapter 31 was lessened.

Craig Wasson was superb performing this audio. He even did a fair impersonation of real figures (Walter Cronkite and President John F Kennedy specifically), and had reasonably good regional accents. I also really appreciated that King read the audio of his afterword. The story was a sort of personal one for him, having lived through the events of that fateful day, and wondered “what if…”

(Review updated on re-read: July 2025)
...more

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Apr 09, 2012 Tien rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, read-on-kobo, own, time-travel, favorites, moving-mt-2015, mm-16

I love love love this book! I’ve only read a handful of Stephen King’s books as horror isn’t my cup of tea so I’ve primarily read his fantasy works plus a few of the ‘horror’ stories (horror in quotation as I try to pick ones that aren’t too scary for me). What’s to love about 11.22.63? Firstly, it’s time travel –my most favourite kind of story! I love the setting (late 50s / early 60s in US) and I just adore the many possibilities, the uncertainties, and cause & effect etc. There are so much to ...more

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Jan 29, 2012 Stacy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: five-stars, e-books, read-in-2012, owned-books

It's been years since I read a Stephen King book, but this was amazing!

Without going into any spoilers, there are parallels in the two main time periods that are spooky at times.

It's too bad that there isn't a real time travel hole so that someone could go back in time and take care of Josh Powell (scumbag that murdered his wife, and later, his two sons). ...more

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Nov 15, 2014 Nancy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, america, alternative-history, time-travel

What would happen to the world if JFK hadn't been assassinated? This was a question which Jake Epping was asked to face seriously when his friend Al admitted that he had discovered a way to step back in time, back to 1958. Al, dying of lung cancer, tasked Jake with going back and trying to stop Lee Harvey Oswald but it was no simple task. As Jake observed on multiple occasions, the past is obdurate. It doesn't want to be changed. Spending 5 years in the past preparing to stop that momentous even ...more

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Nov 28, 2019 Katharine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, imagine-that

My first King novel. Soooooo good!

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Jan 11, 2012 Chris rated it it was amazing

Shelves: united-states, fiction, time-travel, favorites

Wow! I've purposely avoided reading Stephen King for more than 30 years. I couldn't imagine he would write something I'd be interested in reading. I've never been so happy to be wrong. I've always liked time travel stories, and I've always been interested in the JFK assassination, so I've been sniffing around this book since it came out. When I saw it in the library I thought, well, I'll just look at the first couple of pages. 15 minutes later I was still standing there, and I was totally hooked ...more

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Feb 12, 2012 Camilla rated it really liked it

Shelves: ebook

“11/22/63” is the kind of book that isn’t really what you think it’s about. It’s been promoted as a time-travelling adventure of a man intent on stopping the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. And while the book does indeed have that premise as its framework, it’s about something more.

For the uninitiated, Stephen King means horror stories about monsters and hauntings, but for those of us who have absorbed his writings over the years, he is all about peopl

“11/22/63” is the kind of book that isn’t really what you think it’s about. It’s been promoted as a time-travelling adventure of a man intent on stopping the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. And while the book does indeed have that premise as its framework, it’s about something more.

For the uninitiated, Stephen King means horror stories about monsters and hauntings, but for those of us who have absorbed his writings over the years, he is all about people – good people, bad people and the way all kinds of people will act in unexpected ways when faced with something beyond their normal lives. He paints whole miniature worlds, drops something odd – and indeed sometimes frightening – into its midst and sits back and let the people act as they would. At least, that’s the way it’s always seemed to me.

In “11/22/63”, King explores what would happen if an average Joe – or in this case, Jake, is suddenly given the chance to go back in time to a specific point and perhaps change history. Only Jake can’t go back to the day before the assassination or something similarly easy – he can only go to a specific day in 1958 and will then have to spend his time for the 5 years before the assassination in a very different America than he came from. And that is really what this story is all about – the differences and similarities and good and bad of a bygone time – how it looks and feels to a man from 2011 and the seeming inevitability of ordinary life finding you wherever you are. Because while Jake is intent on focusing on tracking a certain Mr. Oswald, he cannot avoid becoming a real presence in the time – with interests, hates and loves.

Apparently, this is the most researched book that King has ever written and as a reader, you do feel that the picture of the time is very accurate and most of all, something that King cares about. I personally know very little of that time other than what I’ve seen in movies, but it comes alive and you can easily imagine what it must have been like.

I liked this book very much, am very impressed with its depth and shed a few tears when it became clear how the ending would play out, but I did not love it. While the book seems to have attracted many new readers to King – likely because there is very little supernatural going on in this book other than the time travel – I do miss a bit more of suspense, of something making me hold my breath and wonder what’s going to happen next or a sneaking feeling of discomfort and horror.

However, that’s just my preference, and there is no doubt that “11/22/63” is a very well-written, well-researched and lovely story of human nature, love and the inevitability of history and time. ...more

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