May, 2016: "11/22/63" by Stephen King
 | Author: Stephen King |
| Genre: Alternative history, science fiction | |
| Published: 2011 | |
| Pages: 841 | |
| Reading started: May 20th, 2016 | |
| Current progress: Page 841 of 841 (100%) | |
| Reading ended: June 24th, 2016. This book was successfully finished in 35 days. | |
| Final review score: 3 of 5 |
Description
Wikipedia: Jake Epping is a recently-divorced high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, earning extra money teaching a GED class. Epping gives an assignment to his adult students, asking them to write about a day that changed their lives. One of the students, a learning-impaired janitor named Harry Dunning, submits an assignment describing the night his alcoholic father murdered his mother and siblings with a hammer and injured Harry, causing him brain damage; the story emotionally affects Jake, and the two become friends after Harry earns his GED.Two years later, in June 2011, Jake stops by a local diner and speaks with the proprietor, Al, who asks Jake to meet him at his diner the next day. When Jake arrives, he is shocked to see that Al seems to have aged years since the previous day. Al explains that he is dying and that his appearance is attributable to his having time traveled and lived for years in the past. Al’s method of time travel is a time portal he discovered in his diner’s pantry, which he used to transport himself to 1958. Doubting Al’s story at first, Jake travels through the portal, where he encounters an addled wino whom Al has dubbed the "Yellow Card Man" due to the color of a card on the man’s hat. Jake spends an hour in 1958 before returning to the present.