King, Stephen. 11/22/63. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011
Three main qualities I like in my books are: Humour, a decent plot line and good characters. What I mean by a decent plot line is that everything ties to together and makes sense. For example, something like "Timmy fell down the well then the cat fell off the pickup truck" is not something I'd be interested in because of the serious lack of relevance. As in for good characters, there's always stock characters in the book. The hero, the sacrificial lamb, the comedic relief, the muscle, the brains, etc.
The books I have read so far this year (It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini and 11/22/63 by Stephen King) have demonstrated a few of these qualities.
It's Kind of a Funny Story offered a depressing, yet humourous read. The story is about New York teen Craig Gilner, who struggles with severe depression. Things get worse, until one night, he nearly kills himself. He checks himself into a hospital, where he is admitted into "Six North" (the adult psychiatric ward), where he interacts with the other patients in the ward. The humourous part of the story is that Craig's view of life is extremely sarcastic, which makes the story funny and sad at the same time.
11/22/63 is the book I'm currently reading, which is about a man who discovers a wormhole back to 1958 and has the idea to live in the past until JFK's assassination, which he believes he can stop. I liked this book not for any of those three qualities, but for the heavy historical references of the story.
