Yea, so I didn't much like 11/22/63

And I'm sure Stephen King is crushed to hear it.
(insert sound of snortling laughter all the way from Maine.)

I'm a devoted fan of Stephen King's book ON WRITING which I think every writer should own, read and re-read.

I'd never read anything else of his cause I'm a wuss when it comes to horror and supernatural stuff. I saw that movie about the car that comes alive and it terrified me.

So, when Stephen King turned his hand to the JFK assassination, I figured it was  time to dive in.  850 pages of depth, but I was ready. I read it last weekend.  In about 36 hours. There was some sleeping and some eating, but not much else.

I was right there with him for the first 150 pages.  Stephen King can REALLY write, but you don't need me to tell you that. Many of you not only already know, you've got favorites among his many MANY novels.

Then as the novel moved forward it lost momentum.  The plot just fell in on itself and flailed.

And worse, he didn't do anything new or interesting with time travel.  Think about it: Stephen King has imagined stuff that has haunted our dreams for years. New and interesting ways to do all sorts of blood curdling stuff.  But this time travel was essentially ho-hum. I'd seen it all before cause I've seen all three Back to the Future movies. (yea, more than once, I admit it.)

I expected more. Not fairly perhaps, given "more" implies he being held to higher standard than other writers. But honestly, he's Stephen King. I expect him to knock my sox off, and when he didn't it feels like a disappointment.

But, I'd have been disappointed if someone other than Stephen King had turned this in. Of course, with anyone else, it would have been chopped down to 400 pages first thing. And I'm not sure it would have gotten published. It's not terrible (despite what the Pittsburgh critic said) but it's not a book I put down and wanted to start talking to people about.  Well, ok that's not true. I did. But what I wanted to say was "You LIKED this?"


And just in case Stephen King is reading this (cue those snortles again) here's a link to a post about how to deal with soul-crushing bad reviews.