Book Review for 11/22/63

Over Thanksgiving break, I read Stephen King's latest book, 11/22/63. This is a story about a man who is able to travel back in time to change the course of history. The main character of this book, Jake Eppings, not only decides to go back to 11/22/63, but along the way, he decides to save a man's family who were brutally murdered.

The catch? He can only go to one time, and that time is the year 1958. In order to get to 1963, he must stay in that time for 5 years. If he returns back to the present, the results of his actions change history, but if he goes back, it's 1958 all over again and everything is "reset".

I'm not going to talk about the book here, because if you want to know what happens, you'll have to read it for yourself. What I do want to talk about is, "What if I could do that? What if I could go back in time? What would I change? What would I do?" These questions are really interesting to me.

Growing up, I always thought I was a "child of the 50's". I've always been conservative in my thinking, and have longed for those seemingly happy and more carefree times. To me, I would be perfectly happy without tv, computers, cell phones, and all the other gadgets we can't seem to live without.

 I've always been fascinated by the events of 11/22/63. I've read several books on the subject, and for me, now it seems that the experts were right. For those who don't know what happened on that day, this was the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. There have been probably 100 books written about this assassination, most of them saying that Lee H. Oswald was not alone in killing our president. I do think now, though, that he was alone, and that sometimes, a crazy person can do what many think is impossible.

Going back to the question at hand, if you could travel in time back to 1958, would you? What would you do? Would you want to change history? Most important of all, would you want to come back? I think if I could go back to 1958, I would stay there. I don't know if I would try to change history, but sometimes I think that less is more, and that our lives have become way too complicated for us. 1958 wasn't perfect, no year or decade is, but for me, I would like to have a slower, simpler life.

Read 11/22/63 if you like stories about changing history, Stephen King, or both. It's a great book, and it gets you thinking about history.

Been A While

It's been a while since I've blogged, and a lot has happened in the past year. I'll try to catch us all up, and hopefully I'll keep writing.

Since my father passed away, I finished and published his last work, Stories My Dad Told. I am quite proud of that. I've also been working on his other unfinished work, a genealogical study of my family. It is very interesting to learn about my family's colorful past. I will probably write a blog about that sometime soon as well.

At school, I began teaching both 7th and 8th grades. It has been a challenge, but it's also been very rewarding. Being able to spend two years with middle school students gives me the chance to get to know them much better.

We're still working on Name calling and bullying in the middle school, but progress is made every year. I continue to hope that name calling will become a thing of the past before I retire.

My cross country team is on top of the world this year! The Middle school boys team has won 8 invitational races, and are quickly becoming THE team to beat this year. I can't describe how proud I am of them.

In ELA, New York has come up with a new way of teaching students, and we are really doing our best to work our way through this new process. I can only hope that students will become more successful with each passing day. It is my hope that soon, ALL middle school students at Afton are successful in their academics.

To be continued....