Book #86 of 2024: 11/22/63, DNF: Reapers
11/22/63 by Stephen King.
Quick synopsis: A man from our times (Sort of. 2011, the year the book was published.) travels back to September 9, 1958 to stop JFK's assassination. Since the assassination happens in 1963, he has to live those five years in the past to reach the right year to attempt to save him.
Brief opinion: Even though I have zero interest in this time period, so many people said this was the best book they ever read or the best book King ever wrote, I finally decided to give it a try. If you enjoy learning about that time period, you'll love this book. Since I'm not interested in it, I struggled a lot.
Plot: Jake is a high school English teacher in Maine. Al, his friend, runs a diner. Decades ago Al discovered a time rift in the storage room in his diner and had been using it since then to travel back to the 50s to buy cheap beef to use in his diner.
When Al reaches the last stages of cancer, he tells Jake what he's been doing: Besides buying cheap beef, he was gathering intel to save JFK and thus improve the future (no Vietnam War, for example).
Jake agrees to take over the mission. Al suicides (ODs on his pain meds) which means Jake now has a time limit -- LL Bean is buying the plot of land, so the diner will be destroyed and Al and Jake think the time rift will be as well.
When he reaches the past, Jake has a surprisingly easy time fitting in. Sure every single person smokes and the clothing/hair is different, but no one ever calls him out on how different he must be acting.
Eventually Jake (using the fake name George, he has a whole set of fake ID for the past) meets a woman (Sadie) and falls in love with her. All sorts of drama happens (both with her ex and with Jake gathering info on Oswald.
In the story's conclusion, the time rift and some other details are explained (though I really didn't buy it).
Writing/editing: I only saw two or three editing mistakes, which in a 849 page book is impressive.
What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: While I've read most of King's books, I skipped this one for a long time. I'm indifferent about time traveling stories, and 50s/60s politics and JFK's assassination put me to sleep. Even as good of a storyteller as King is, I was bored or uninterested through too much of this book.
Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay. Maybe 2.5 stars would be more accurate, but I'm rounding up because while the setting and plot didn't interest me at all, the book still never felt like a slog to get through.
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DNF #83: Reapers by Bryan Davis. How did I miss this was Christian fiction? Self-published, but tried to hide it by listing a fake publisher (lying is considered a sin, so how does the author explain that?). I didn't believe the story, didn't like the writing.
DNFed early on.