11/22/63 by Stephen King

What if you could go back in time and prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy?

I read Stephen King’s newest novel on a great 4 days trip to Whistler with LT & Wilvis. In between ski runs and watching the snow bunnies dance, I enjoying an epic 900 pages of classic King, in which he returns to his favorite haunts (Derry) and favorite decades (fifties and sixties) to spin the yarn of a time travelling school teacher on a weighty mission to prevent the moment when everything went wrong for the baby boomers.

As with all of King’s later novels, he meanders and fills pages with side plots and observations that add reams of texture without particularly addressing the primary story. But as always, it’s a delightful journey. There’s plenty of the horrific here, though the novel is not an According to Hoyle horror novel per se.

A few time travel clichés rear their heads, but in the main, King is able to keep the focus on observations about how things have changed in the last 50 years, give us a little bit of JFK trivia, and give us at least two or three characters we can invest in.

A fun ride.

The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss

Now this was something actually new! I stopped into a bookstore in Canada; a bookstore I really don’t like, I might add. I was irritated with the fiction I’d read recently and wanted to learn how to do something new.

I ran across Ferris’ book and opened it up with great skepticism. I was delighted. Ferris advocates a type of lifestyle design that is empowering, realistic, and entirely possible, if not for everyone.

In brief, Ferris encourages you to recognize that almost nothing is out of your reach and that most of the reasons people give for deferring their dreams are simple excuses. He goes on to give lots of great advice for how to manage one’s time more efficiently – sort of a “habits of highly effective people” bit – then he dives into a collection of chapters on how to reform your work/life balance in a fairly radical way. He gives further advice on a wide range of topics, from “outsourcing your life” to how to structure companies such that they aren’t a horrific burden on their leaders.

I loved the book, and have become a follower of Ferris’s blog, and, in large part, the lifestyle he advocates. It was the sort of book that well stated a number of beliefs I’ve had for quite some time.

In short: The rules don’t have to apply to you, because there are no rules. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. You can have the life you want; it’s there for your taking.

Highly recommended for anyone who is paralyzed by all the bullshit fears in life that prevent them from actually having one.

Ferris reminds us that learning new things is cool, that you can be anything you want to be, and that life is yours if you but choose to participate in it.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Cool little sci-fi novel. Bit of a classic, I suppose. Haldeman, who clearly served in Vietnam, writes the first half of his soldier’s story with a real ear for grunt dialog. Things get a bit steamy as he fantasizes about a free-love co-ed army. Then, once we delve into the meat of the tale, which addresses the social implications of faster-than-light travel, things start to get really interesting.

Our protagonist goes on several missions, one of which strands him in a galactic backwater. When he returns from each of these missions, some really significant periods of time have passed for Earth. The social and inter-personal revelations which unfold are fascinating and occasionally touching. Dan Simmons had clearly read Haldeman’s novel when writing a few of the tales in Hyperion.