For those of you who are, like me, kind of on the fence about Stephen King, I can definitely recommend 11/22/63 -- it's full of tension and romance, time travel and mystery, drama and philosophy -- plus he managed to stay the course with an excellent ending (with help from his son Joe). Unlike the novels where King gets distracted by his own silliness and wanders off into demons or aliens and supernatural gore, I got the impression King took his subject seriously with this book, and that he had some things he wanted to say about the passage of time, about the quality of life, about the events that change our lives, and about our priorities as individuals and as a nation. Make no mistake, it is still Stephen King, writing at his best when characters are people you swear you know, and his wry tongue-in-cheek references keep his fans happy. However, I think he dug a little deeper this time, and I'm very glad he did.