Podcast Challenge

I should probably start off by explaining the Podcast Reading Challenge. A friend and I listen to similar podcasts and NPR, and have heard of quite a few books from it. We also like to read, so we decided to try to read some of the books we've learned about through podcasts and NPR. (We include NPR because it's basically one giant podcast anymore.) Our goal is 12 books, but right now the list only has 9 books on it.

I finished before the new year (which is OK according the challenge I made up, because I didn't want to wait a month or so until I could read these books), but I wanted to add it here. I read 11/22/63 by Stephen King. It's about a man who travels back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination. You should probably stop reading now if you don't want spoilers.

All-in-all, I like reading Stephen King. I haven't read much of his stuff, but I've enjoyed everything I have read. This book was no exception, but I found it to be a little long for me. I think I found it to be too long because it was probably 300 pages longer than anything else I've read in the past year and because you know what the major climax will be, and I reached a point (around page 650) where I no longer cared about the events leading up to the assassination and I just wanted to know what happened. I've heard some people think it could've been 300 pages shorter, and I didn't think it was that bad, I think I was just getting antsy.

A brief background of the book: Al found a portal into the past. When you travel through it, you always go to the same date in September 1958. When you come back, it's 2 minutes after you left. Al wanted to see if he could change history in a huge way, and decides on the JFK assassination. He does a quick butterfly effect test by preventing a hunting accident that left a teenage girl paralyzed for the rest of her life. When he gets back, he finds that life is mostly the same, looks her up, and sees her life is different, but since everything is generally the same, he thinks preventing JFK from being killed will change the future, but it will be better (the Vietnam War will end earlier, Martin Luther King, Jr. will not be assassinated, no race riots, RFK will not be killed). While Al is waiting out the 5 years, he develops lung cancer and returns to the future for better treatment and to get someone else to go back and take care of it. His cancer is so bad, he may not make it to the assassination. He recruits Jake, gives him a new identity as George, and George starts his travels.

George does a test, too. He thinks Al's, while doing good, didn't save a life, and he wants to see that difference. He know about a father who killed nearly his entire family in 1958, so he headed there to prevent that. The world was mostly the same when he got back. He goes back again, this time for JFK.

It's at this point in the book where I think there is a disregard for the butterfly effect. While George doesn't (as far as we can tell) save lives, he does start to touch a lot of people's lives. He becomes a high school English teacher (his profession in 2011), falls in love with a divorcee, and becomes a fixture in a small town. He catches, but doesn't punish kids drinking at a dance (one of whom would've lost his scholarship to play football). He convinces a football player (in 1960s small town Texas) to start acting. I'm just saying this activity could cause some major changes in the future.

A theme throughout the book is that the past is obdurate. The bigger the change, the harder it is to change it. When Al saved the girl, he got a flat tire and a bridge was out. When Jake/George saved the family, he got sick and nearly got killed by someone else. So, the past worked against George again when trying to save JFK. (And I often wonder what little obstacles came up with the smaller changes). He got beat up and lost his memory. He spent weeks trying to remember Lee Harvey Oswald's name. In the end, he figured enough out. Then he lost a tire, a bus he was on crashed, his girlfriend almost got mugged, they stole 2 cars, but they were able to get to the book depository and prevent Oswald from shooting JFK. George initially has some trouble, but he's able to return to 2011. Before he does, he speaks to a man who lives near the portal and that man tries to convince him to go the 2011, then immediately return to 1958 to reset and go back to 2011 and leave the past alone. The butterfly effect isn't the only problem. The past does not like being change and bite back. When George returns to 2011, he immediately sees that at least his corner of Maine has not changed for the better. He gets a brief history lesson and learns that while we cut back on Vietnam, MLK was still shot, the race riots were worse, and now there are frequent massive earthquakes across the world. Undoubtedly, this world is worse for the average person than the one where JFK died.

George goes back to 1958, but, due to his love for the woman in Texas, he doesn't head immediately back for 2011. He has no plans to save any lives, but will clearly be changing the past just by staying. When people become so wrapped up with the idea that they're supposed to be with someone that they will do so with complete disregard for everyone else really bothers me. I think authors try to pass it off as romantic, but I just see it as selfish. Especially in this case where George has been told and has seen what changing the past can do. Thankfully, he returns to 2011, and life is normal.