I finished up my “holiday reading” choice last night around 3:00 AM. I had “11/22/63” by Stephen King sitting on the shelf for a month and decided it was time to knock it out. The story centers around a teacher that finds a time portal to 1958. He quickly decides to stick around in the past for a few years to stop the Kennedy assassination.
Once you accept the time portal as a plot device, the book falls into a steady pace. The first half sets up the main character (Jake) and how he operates in the past. King develops rules about time travel, essentially cosmic forces push back when someone attempts to alter time. For example if you are trying to stop someone from getting shot, the road you are taking may be blocked by an overturned truck. Jake also opts to take on a few smaller side missions, averting tragedies that happened to friends or children he read about. Failure means Jake would have to go back into the time portal which hits the reset button every time (so he has to do each thing over again and it becomes harder).
The book slows down considerably when Jake hits Texas. He establishes a life for himself and bunkers down for the three years while he waits for Oswald to arrive in Dallas. Life in small town Texas and the friendships Jake develops reads well, but when the plot shifts back to stopping Lee Harvey, something doesn’t feel right. The tone of the book never recovers. Without giving too much away, the cosmic forces start to push back and the crazy commences. King does such a good job foreshadowing these threads, they never come off as shocking. Since you know it is coming, it just feels like you are flipping pages until the next thing happens.
Without giving the big plot point away, Jake being in the past for 5 years changes things, which cause some “Back to the Future Part 2” kind of problem at the end of the story. King introduces characters/concepts at the end of the book that feel like they may be part of another King story, but I haven’t read it (King has a cameo featuring “It” characters in the first part of the book). He offers a little more information about the time portal which was nice, but unnecessary.
Even though the “11/22/63” drags in the middle, I liked this book. If for nothing else, King does a great job of painting life in the 1960s. My friends and I often sit around and talk about our zombie survival plans, I feel like people who grew up during the Kennedy era probably had similar conversations about “if you could go back in time, how would you stop the Kennedy assassination”. This is how Stephen King would do it – I can respect that.
Happy New Year friends! 2011 is slipping through our fingers and I find myself trying to conjure words to summarize what that means to me. I am going to be honest with you, I am struggling with this year’s love note. Not due to any dark feelings, in fact, just the opposite. I have been feeling pretty calm this past week, which is good for the blood pressure, but bad for writing clever things.
[Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes]
Even though times are tough and there is a bit of uncertainty regarding the future, it seems like my friends and family made it out of 2011 in one piece. It is easy to turn sour watching your 401k shrink, the value of your house decline, and services you depend on disappear. But all things considered, the Philadelphia area is breeding grounds for plucky people that take all this shit in stride and figure out how to get through it.
It is hard to focus on the negatives when I look around and see all these kids that I mention every year growing up strong and smart. The world is hard, but I am glad to see my people have their priorities straight. As far as my priorities go, I will be in good company with a baby on the way. I am not going to turn this post into “my child is going to change my life…bla bla bla” because anybody with a kid knows that as fact (a fact I have been told a million times along with “get your sleep now.”).
Jangled nerves and worry have subsided and I am looking forward to becoming a parent. Fundamentally, I really hope I don’t suck as a dad (that is not me fishing for kind words btw, just consider that line a karmic message in a bottle). It is a funny thing writing about the baby because I haven’t done it much and thanks to the holidays I am burned out on active baby conversation. I do want to mention that I feel bad about the news getting out late to certain friends. I guess people really do use social media to keep in touch (oops)…
All that being said, the quiet has been a blessing. Babies tend to bring out lots of opinions, all those voices talking at the same time can be overpowering. That brings me into a nice transition…
[Thank You]
If you have been reading these little year ends, you know that I view this section as a loaded gun… time to point and shoot. Here is hoping I don’t get a bullet in the foot:
Thanks to my wife. Outside of making this whole baby thing happen, she gets me. My odd sense of humor, my “in your face” method of dealing with…everything, my musical taste (very important in this house). Compatibility makes life so much better.
Speaking of the babies, when we told our parents, we asked them to keep it quiet for a few weeks until we got solid news from the doctors. My father-in-law was so excited, he had to tell someone… so he told his barber. That little story sort of made it all real to me. Also thank you Mr. D for making me look like I know how to pick out a bottle of wine.
I really don’t know how else to say this… I want to thank my mom for not being up our asses. My mom is at the ready to help Allison and I at a moments notice. But she never second guesses our decisions about anything. She offers her personal perspective or experience and leaves it at that. There is grace in accepting (and enjoying) your children as adults. I can thank her for a million things that she does for us, but this is the thing I appreciate the most.
I need to thank Verizon. They have made it possible for my father and I to communicate at a frequency that I did not think possible two years ago. Here is the best part… I am the bastard. If I haven’t seen or talked to my dad during the week, I get the call. “Sonny Boy, where have you been!?!” For a man that is fairly indifferent to just about everything, it is good to know that he cares.
Thank you to Tony Bombardi, the master detective – I love you, your family and your mini adventures that often lead right back to the starting point. Whenever I do freak out about this kid, I think “what would Tony do” and then you usually end up calling me anyway.
So I just went back and carved out a huge section thanking friends. This is what I am going to say instead: to the people that I talk to regularly – the people who call me to talk about music, house stuff, gear, zombies – you know who you are. I love you guys (and gals). If it were not for you, I would probably lock myself in my house and take all the phones off the hook (fine – take the batteries out of my cell phone – damn you nerds!). There are dozens of people I should mention, but nobody wants to read two pages of thanks (and then probably, rightfully, wondering why you are not on the list).
[Looking Forward]
There are times in my life, and if you know me I am sure you have been caught in this, when I want to hold everyone I know close to me. Then once that exercise becomes (inevitably) futile, I will retreat, ignoring everyone, and rethink my position. I have been in retreat mode the last few months. I have been thinking about what is right for me and my growing family. And right now I think change is good.
Instead of some grand statement of how to make yourself better in 2012, or jumping on some soapbox about the state of the world, I hope you – my friends, family, and readers – find happiness or something that smells like it.
My friends Jack, Lorraine, Amber, and Tom played some tunes last year at my house on Xmas Eve. They won’t be attending this year, so I figured I would share some video throughout the day to help everyone get in the Xmas spirit.
NOTE: Looks like youtube added a snow effect for the holiday season. Be sure to turn it on! There is a snowflake button on the controls if you mouse over it (how cool is that!)
I just finished reading Erin Morgenstern’s “The Night Circus” and I found myself liking it more than I thought I would. The book is about a mysterious traveling circus that (if you can’t figure it out by the title), opens only at night. This circus is essentially the best ever because there are a few members of the crew who can actually do “real magic.” Morgenstern hints that the “magic” is more like science but never gets to deep into the technical details.
The story revolves around a bet made by two old rivals. They train young children (the more villainous of the two uses his own daughter) to engage in a decades-long competition that neither student know the rules to. The circus becomes their battleground as each one tries to out-do each other with attractions and optical illusions. Neither student can interfere or tamper with the other’s work. Of course as the children get older and find out each other’s identities, they fall in love (snore).
The best part of the book is that Morgenstern doesn’t give the reader a hint about how the ending. Neither character “goes dark” or tries to take advantage of the other, and Morgenstern plays by the rules she created for her universe. The romantic aspects of the book are weak and feels like “Water for Elephants” – the “I love you but I can’t be with you” nonsense, but Morgenstern wisely leverages her secondary characters to add atmosphere and back story so the primary plot of the love story utilizes the least amount of pages possible.
“The Night Circus” works because the plot moves along at a good pace and the writer did an excellent job of keeping reader interest high. I won’t say it is a great book, but it is good and I enjoyed the time I spent with it.
