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Welcome to Derry, Maine ...
It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real ...
They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.
It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real ...
They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them back to Derry to face the nightmare without an end, and the evil without a name.
1116 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 1986
About the author
Stephen King
2,599 books860k followersStephen Edwin King was born the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his father left them when Stephen was two, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of them. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, THE MAINE CAMPUS. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
He met Tabitha Spruce in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University, where they both worked as students; they married in January of 1971. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many were gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching English at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
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January 12, 2011
The most important things are the hardest things to say, because words diminish them...
Some time ago the wise bald (or white) heads stationed at various universities came to an agreement that a literary form, commonly known as the novel, is dead - fewer and fewer works of any significance are written each year. Of course, one must understand the requirements the wise gentlemen expect of a novel of worth: it would be good if the writer would include some "aesthetic dignity" by including as much allusions and connections to other previous works of literature - consciously, that is. The language must also be exquisite; preferably obsure and as incomprehensible as possible, drawing from earlier works of worth and including metaphors and allusions to them. If the author by any chance happens to include a plot in his work, there is a good percentage of possibility that his work will be deemed unworthy, and forever excluded by the adacemia.
Or at least as long as these wise gentlemen live.
Of course, the reader is not expected to understand, not to mention enjoy the work of worth - no one reads anymore, the wise men would say; people read rubbish like Danielle Steel when Bold & Beautiful is not on the TV. And, by God, no such novel of worth can ever be popular - after all, the intelligence level required to appreciate it is apparently not met by the 90% of world population.
A literary figure who is as popular and appreciated like The Beatles? Whose work is admired by thousands of people? And the possibility that these people might learn something from it? That is simply not possible - the wise heads mutter in unison - that is simply not possible! Ask people who know!
Ask us!
History, as we know it, has a nasty habit of repeating itself - though in this case something good might actually come out of it. Writers have been criticized before - most notably Twain and Dickens - and yet, their work is still read and loved by whole generations of readers. Their fiction is taught in schools. Huckleberry Finn has been deemed as vulgar and impropable, much od Dickens's work was described as overtly sentimental, but it prevailed - which can't be said about those who concerned themselved with being the so-called "Arbiters of Literature". In the end, they couldn't grind the knives because they weren't theirs to wield.
The bones of those who tried to define "literature" perished; the works they so often tried to banish did not. No one remembers (or cares) about those who tried to defy the power of Twain or Dickens; they are immortal through their works.
People perish; books do not. No one cares about the boy's club of the literati, who cry out words of rage from the ivory tower, instead of helping people understand the joy of reading, understanding and believing. The main principle of art is to evoke; the problem is, not many of the educated seem to understand that even simple things can evoke great emotions. But they too will go down in history without leaving any mark on it, forgotten and alone; and I believe that there will be a lot of bodies turning in their graves when some titles enter the school curriculum.
"IT" by all means, is not a simple novel. To classify it as a "horror" story is the same as saying that "Moby Dick" is a very long manual on whaling. To say that it is all about the monster is to say that the whale is the villain of the piece.
We all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest
fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves.
-Robert McCammon
Although vulnerable and physically weak, two factors that make them perfect victims, children posess strenght that most adults had lost in the painful process of maturing - the strenght of imagination. A child feels and experiences emotions much more intensely than an adult, but their unique imaginative capacity allows it to cope with the seemingly impropable much more efficiently. Hence when in 'Salem's Lot an adult faces a vampire, he fells down dead from a heart attack. When a child faces one, he is able to go to sleep ten minutes later. As King puts it, "Such is the difference between men and boys".
King has been depicting children throughout his whole career, and his child characters have subsequently grown older, along with his own children. "IT" is in my opinion his best novel with child protagonists; his most elaborate, complex one. It's also one of his longest, if not the longest.
The lenght is appropriate, because of the theme: After all, it deals with childhood. Childhood defies Time; a day can last forever, and the summers are endless. And then we grow up, all these years pass, just like a blink.
Kids are bent. They think around corners. But starting at roughly age eight, when childhood's second great era begins, the kinks begin to straighten out, one by one. The boundaries of thought and vision begin to close down to a tunnel as we gear up to get along.
-Stephen King, Danse Macabre
Children also posess another one of the invaluable assets that most adults strive to grasp, and it still seeps through their fingers, like sand: Time. Children experience the passing of time differently not because time actually slows down for them (that would be a neat thing indeed) but because they occupy a vastly different social position than that of an average adult. Most adults are forced to work and take care of their families, offspring included. Their imagination is dimmed by the countless hours spent on labor, and for most it never really comes back...the disilusions of experience push it farther abd farther down in the dungeons of the mind, until we finally forget that it was even there in the first place.
Until we forget what we are possible of...what adventures we can create, what worlds and realms, completely out of the whole cloth.
When you are a child the hours lazily pass by, the only important matter is to get home from school and after throwing the backpack in a corner going to get your friends and hanging out with them till dinner...and then go hang out with them some more.
The imagination is an eye, a marvelous third eye that floats free. As children, that eye sees with 20/20 clarity. As we grow older, its vision begins to dim . . . and one day the guy at the door lets you into the bar without asking to see any ID and that's it for you, Cholly; your hat is over the windmill. It's in your eyes. Something in your eyes. Check them out in the mirror and tell me if I'm wrong.
The job of the fantasy writer, or the horror writer, is to bust the walls of that tunnel vision wide for a little while; to provide a single powerful spectacle for that third eye. The job of the fantasy-horror writer is to make you, for a little while, a child again.
Most children experience more during one summer vacation than some adults throughout their whole life; They have their precious innocence, they haven't been spoiled by work, by taxes, by bills and other things that each of us has to face at some point in life. There is always food in the fridge, and there is always roof over the head; and if there is not, there is always hope that there eventually will be, and friends that help to keep it.
Children do more and see more because they can; when school ends, the day is theirs. Their schedule is not as strict as that of an adult; their duties not as responsible. Therefore, they do not have to trouble themselves with money and shelter, and even if they do they are easily able to push these matters away and concentrate completely on what they are doing right here and now.
With little breaks for homework and chores children can spend the whole day playing make-believe with their precious friends, and sometimes the boundaries between the real and the imagined become thin, and sometimes they vanish altogether.
Sometimes their thoughts take shapes...and sometimes their fears do too. Sometimes they joy is almost tangible...and sometimes the boogeymen come out of the closet.
And sometimes they are real.
"IT" is a story of a group of children who are not among the most popular, strongest or smartest; a tale about the group of seven friends living in Derry, Maine in 1958. They form the self-called "losers" club and encounter a horrible, awesome force lurking in their hometown...a force feeding on fear and devouring young children. A force that adults do not seem to see; a force that appears as a clown, holding a hand full of baloons.
The seven children all have one thing in common: they encountered IT. They had all escaped...and that one summer of 58, the seven friends have confronted and defeated IT.
Or so they had thought.
28 years later a young homosexual is thrown off a bridge in Derry...it seems like a classic, clear case of homophobia, but the testimony of one of the witnesses changes everything.
He claims he has seen a clown under the bridge...a clown and a cloud of balloons.
Mike Hanlon, the sole member of the losers who remained in Derry calls the others and reminds them of the promise they had made all these years ago...a promise sealed in blood. A vow to return if IT wasn't dead. If IT will come back. And apparently, IT has.
Can they face IT again? Can they go back to the horror they have long forgotten?
They faced the terror as children. It was their time to take action, and they managed to fight it. Now they are all grown-up...but it is their time,too.
Will the monster be bested...or will IT FEED?
"IT" is composed of two nonlinear narratives. The first is the story of 1958, where we meet the children and they first encounter IT; King effortlesly interleaves this timeline with the story of 1985, where the adults return to Derry to fight IT, basing on research that has been done on the subject and their returning memories. IT avoids the problems of most other lenghty books: plot threads that go nowhere. Each of them is important, and only adds to the suspense and builds up to the shattering climax.
If there is a thing which places King above most other writers, it certainly is his great understandning of adolescence. Few others manage to write so vividly and convinclingly about childhood and coming of age.
The unquestionably hard time of growing up - school, bullies, parents, first crushes - they are all here, and the reader feels as if he himself was experiencing them. King allowed me to re-live my past again; I wasn't around in 1958, but if I were I would undoubtedly be one of the boys. It is truly an impressive experience to read how King builds his characters and the world they live in.
Which of course includes stormdrains...which might be empty, but then they might be not.
IT also manages to adress important social topics: racism, prejudice, domestic abuse. But most importantly it is a story about friendship and childhood: How it irrevocably binds people together and affect their lives. About the power of memory and imagination; about the terror of the familiar world which hides many secrets around the corners and down in the sewers. It's a study of children facing the uncanny, and overcoming their greatest fear: the fear of being alone in fright.
IT is a story of seven friends, each different, each indispensable and irreplaceable.
stuttering Bill Denbrough, the unlikely group leader;
Ben Hansocom, an overweight boy, with a talent for architecture;
Riche Tozier, the brilliant witty boy of many voices;
Mike Hanlon, the black kid who comes to the group to find acceptance and finds it;
Eddie Kaspbrak, the asthmatic and fragile boy who finds within the group a thing he has never dreamed of - courage;
Stan Uris, a sensible boy who brings understanding;
and Beverly March, the sole girl in the group, an redhead who is both sweet and tough, and helps the boys in most dire of moments.
King has proven himself earlier to be capable of producing an epic narrative (The Stand in 1978), but I think that IT is equal to - or even surpasses - the story of the plague.
This is a brilliant novel, beautifully told in crisp, clear prose, with truly unforgettable characters and situations. It is the essence of good fiction; the truth inside the lie. King knows his way around the corners; and has that undefiniable look in the eye, the dreamy look of a child. His words are the best set of toys he ever had; and he's generous enough to share them with us. And when he's showing us how his trains travel along the tracks of his imagination and where they go to, we won't dare to blink because we could miss a minute of the experience...even when the carriage passes through some dark tunnels.
And if it is the work of an "inadequate writer", a producer of "penny dreadfuls", without any "aesthetic value" or other high-flown pretentious gibberish babbled by people who would most likely want to cast Stephen King and his readers to hell for destroying the image of "Literary Reader"?
Like Huck Finn, I'd shout loud "All right, then, I'll GO to hell!"
Literary Heaven might have a better climate; but Literary Hell sure has better company.
Some time ago the wise bald (or white) heads stationed at various universities came to an agreement that a literary form, commonly known as the novel, is dead - fewer and fewer works of any significance are written each year. Of course, one must understand the requirements the wise gentlemen expect of a novel of worth: it would be good if the writer would include some "aesthetic dignity" by including as much allusions and connections to other previous works of literature - consciously, that is. The language must also be exquisite; preferably obsure and as incomprehensible as possible, drawing from earlier works of worth and including metaphors and allusions to them. If the author by any chance happens to include a plot in his work, there is a good percentage of possibility that his work will be deemed unworthy, and forever excluded by the adacemia.
Or at least as long as these wise gentlemen live.
Of course, the reader is not expected to understand, not to mention enjoy the work of worth - no one reads anymore, the wise men would say; people read rubbish like Danielle Steel when Bold & Beautiful is not on the TV. And, by God, no such novel of worth can ever be popular - after all, the intelligence level required to appreciate it is apparently not met by the 90% of world population.
A literary figure who is as popular and appreciated like The Beatles? Whose work is admired by thousands of people? And the possibility that these people might learn something from it? That is simply not possible - the wise heads mutter in unison - that is simply not possible! Ask people who know!
Ask us!
History, as we know it, has a nasty habit of repeating itself - though in this case something good might actually come out of it. Writers have been criticized before - most notably Twain and Dickens - and yet, their work is still read and loved by whole generations of readers. Their fiction is taught in schools. Huckleberry Finn has been deemed as vulgar and impropable, much od Dickens's work was described as overtly sentimental, but it prevailed - which can't be said about those who concerned themselved with being the so-called "Arbiters of Literature". In the end, they couldn't grind the knives because they weren't theirs to wield.
The bones of those who tried to define "literature" perished; the works they so often tried to banish did not. No one remembers (or cares) about those who tried to defy the power of Twain or Dickens; they are immortal through their works.
People perish; books do not. No one cares about the boy's club of the literati, who cry out words of rage from the ivory tower, instead of helping people understand the joy of reading, understanding and believing. The main principle of art is to evoke; the problem is, not many of the educated seem to understand that even simple things can evoke great emotions. But they too will go down in history without leaving any mark on it, forgotten and alone; and I believe that there will be a lot of bodies turning in their graves when some titles enter the school curriculum.
"IT" by all means, is not a simple novel. To classify it as a "horror" story is the same as saying that "Moby Dick" is a very long manual on whaling. To say that it is all about the monster is to say that the whale is the villain of the piece.
We all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest
fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves.
-Robert McCammon
Although vulnerable and physically weak, two factors that make them perfect victims, children posess strenght that most adults had lost in the painful process of maturing - the strenght of imagination. A child feels and experiences emotions much more intensely than an adult, but their unique imaginative capacity allows it to cope with the seemingly impropable much more efficiently. Hence when in 'Salem's Lot an adult faces a vampire, he fells down dead from a heart attack. When a child faces one, he is able to go to sleep ten minutes later. As King puts it, "Such is the difference between men and boys".
King has been depicting children throughout his whole career, and his child characters have subsequently grown older, along with his own children. "IT" is in my opinion his best novel with child protagonists; his most elaborate, complex one. It's also one of his longest, if not the longest.
The lenght is appropriate, because of the theme: After all, it deals with childhood. Childhood defies Time; a day can last forever, and the summers are endless. And then we grow up, all these years pass, just like a blink.
Kids are bent. They think around corners. But starting at roughly age eight, when childhood's second great era begins, the kinks begin to straighten out, one by one. The boundaries of thought and vision begin to close down to a tunnel as we gear up to get along.
-Stephen King, Danse Macabre
Children also posess another one of the invaluable assets that most adults strive to grasp, and it still seeps through their fingers, like sand: Time. Children experience the passing of time differently not because time actually slows down for them (that would be a neat thing indeed) but because they occupy a vastly different social position than that of an average adult. Most adults are forced to work and take care of their families, offspring included. Their imagination is dimmed by the countless hours spent on labor, and for most it never really comes back...the disilusions of experience push it farther abd farther down in the dungeons of the mind, until we finally forget that it was even there in the first place.
Until we forget what we are possible of...what adventures we can create, what worlds and realms, completely out of the whole cloth.
When you are a child the hours lazily pass by, the only important matter is to get home from school and after throwing the backpack in a corner going to get your friends and hanging out with them till dinner...and then go hang out with them some more.
The imagination is an eye, a marvelous third eye that floats free. As children, that eye sees with 20/20 clarity. As we grow older, its vision begins to dim . . . and one day the guy at the door lets you into the bar without asking to see any ID and that's it for you, Cholly; your hat is over the windmill. It's in your eyes. Something in your eyes. Check them out in the mirror and tell me if I'm wrong.
The job of the fantasy writer, or the horror writer, is to bust the walls of that tunnel vision wide for a little while; to provide a single powerful spectacle for that third eye. The job of the fantasy-horror writer is to make you, for a little while, a child again.
Most children experience more during one summer vacation than some adults throughout their whole life; They have their precious innocence, they haven't been spoiled by work, by taxes, by bills and other things that each of us has to face at some point in life. There is always food in the fridge, and there is always roof over the head; and if there is not, there is always hope that there eventually will be, and friends that help to keep it.
Children do more and see more because they can; when school ends, the day is theirs. Their schedule is not as strict as that of an adult; their duties not as responsible. Therefore, they do not have to trouble themselves with money and shelter, and even if they do they are easily able to push these matters away and concentrate completely on what they are doing right here and now.
With little breaks for homework and chores children can spend the whole day playing make-believe with their precious friends, and sometimes the boundaries between the real and the imagined become thin, and sometimes they vanish altogether.
Sometimes their thoughts take shapes...and sometimes their fears do too. Sometimes they joy is almost tangible...and sometimes the boogeymen come out of the closet.
And sometimes they are real.
"IT" is a story of a group of children who are not among the most popular, strongest or smartest; a tale about the group of seven friends living in Derry, Maine in 1958. They form the self-called "losers" club and encounter a horrible, awesome force lurking in their hometown...a force feeding on fear and devouring young children. A force that adults do not seem to see; a force that appears as a clown, holding a hand full of baloons.
The seven children all have one thing in common: they encountered IT. They had all escaped...and that one summer of 58, the seven friends have confronted and defeated IT.
Or so they had thought.
28 years later a young homosexual is thrown off a bridge in Derry...it seems like a classic, clear case of homophobia, but the testimony of one of the witnesses changes everything.
He claims he has seen a clown under the bridge...a clown and a cloud of balloons.
Mike Hanlon, the sole member of the losers who remained in Derry calls the others and reminds them of the promise they had made all these years ago...a promise sealed in blood. A vow to return if IT wasn't dead. If IT will come back. And apparently, IT has.
Can they face IT again? Can they go back to the horror they have long forgotten?
They faced the terror as children. It was their time to take action, and they managed to fight it. Now they are all grown-up...but it is their time,too.
Will the monster be bested...or will IT FEED?
"IT" is composed of two nonlinear narratives. The first is the story of 1958, where we meet the children and they first encounter IT; King effortlesly interleaves this timeline with the story of 1985, where the adults return to Derry to fight IT, basing on research that has been done on the subject and their returning memories. IT avoids the problems of most other lenghty books: plot threads that go nowhere. Each of them is important, and only adds to the suspense and builds up to the shattering climax.
If there is a thing which places King above most other writers, it certainly is his great understandning of adolescence. Few others manage to write so vividly and convinclingly about childhood and coming of age.
The unquestionably hard time of growing up - school, bullies, parents, first crushes - they are all here, and the reader feels as if he himself was experiencing them. King allowed me to re-live my past again; I wasn't around in 1958, but if I were I would undoubtedly be one of the boys. It is truly an impressive experience to read how King builds his characters and the world they live in.
Which of course includes stormdrains...which might be empty, but then they might be not.
IT also manages to adress important social topics: racism, prejudice, domestic abuse. But most importantly it is a story about friendship and childhood: How it irrevocably binds people together and affect their lives. About the power of memory and imagination; about the terror of the familiar world which hides many secrets around the corners and down in the sewers. It's a study of children facing the uncanny, and overcoming their greatest fear: the fear of being alone in fright.
IT is a story of seven friends, each different, each indispensable and irreplaceable.
stuttering Bill Denbrough, the unlikely group leader;
Ben Hansocom, an overweight boy, with a talent for architecture;
Riche Tozier, the brilliant witty boy of many voices;
Mike Hanlon, the black kid who comes to the group to find acceptance and finds it;
Eddie Kaspbrak, the asthmatic and fragile boy who finds within the group a thing he has never dreamed of - courage;
Stan Uris, a sensible boy who brings understanding;
and Beverly March, the sole girl in the group, an redhead who is both sweet and tough, and helps the boys in most dire of moments.
King has proven himself earlier to be capable of producing an epic narrative (The Stand in 1978), but I think that IT is equal to - or even surpasses - the story of the plague.
This is a brilliant novel, beautifully told in crisp, clear prose, with truly unforgettable characters and situations. It is the essence of good fiction; the truth inside the lie. King knows his way around the corners; and has that undefiniable look in the eye, the dreamy look of a child. His words are the best set of toys he ever had; and he's generous enough to share them with us. And when he's showing us how his trains travel along the tracks of his imagination and where they go to, we won't dare to blink because we could miss a minute of the experience...even when the carriage passes through some dark tunnels.
And if it is the work of an "inadequate writer", a producer of "penny dreadfuls", without any "aesthetic value" or other high-flown pretentious gibberish babbled by people who would most likely want to cast Stephen King and his readers to hell for destroying the image of "Literary Reader"?
Like Huck Finn, I'd shout loud "All right, then, I'll GO to hell!"
Literary Heaven might have a better climate; but Literary Hell sure has better company.
April 4, 2023
”It wasn’t make-up the clown was wearing. Nor was the clown simply swaddled in a bunch of bandages. There were bandages, most of them around its neck and wrists, blowing back in the wind, but Ben could see the clown’s face clearly. It was deeply lined, the skin a parchment map of wrinkles, tattered cheeks, arid flesh. The skin of its forehead was split but bloodless. Dead lips grinned back from a maw in which teeth leaned like tombstones. Its gums were pitted and black. Ben could see no eyes, but something glittering far back in the charcoal pits of those puckered sockets, something like the cold jewels in the eyes of the Egyptian scarab beetles. And although the wind was the wrong way, it seemed to him that he could smell cinnamon and spice, rotting cerements treated with weird drugs, sand, blood so old it had dried to flecks and grains of rust…”
Once I turned the last page of 1,153 pages, I felt like Scribner or Stephen King or someone owed me a t-shirt saying...I survived IT. When I say IT, I’m not just referring to the enormous length of the novel, but also the total sticky, blood encrusted emersion in this epic tale of horror. The book is two novels entwined together. One is set in 1958 when seven children take on this alien creature, and the other is these same children, now adults, returning in 1985 to fight this entity again. A publisher with an eye for more book sales might have convinced a writer, a different writer than Stephen King, to pull these books apart and sell them in two separate novels, but I’m afraid we might have been talking about two three star books instead of one five star book.
IT was meant to be.
King manages to take these seven kids and make them into seven distinct personalities. After spending so much time with them, I feel like I know them better than friends I’ve had for decades. Even as King reintroduces us to them again as adults, we see the personalities of the children, like a hot stamped template, still in the adults. Mike is the only one who stays in Derry, Maine. He becomes the town librarian, and by default, the person who keeps an eye out for signs of the return of IT. The other six all leave and become very successful. Bill becomes a novelist and overcomes his childhood stutter. Beverly becomes a fashion designer, but still can’t shake her need to be with a man who hurts her. Ben loses all that weight he carried as a child and becomes a famous architect. Stan becomes a wealthy accountant. Richie is a disc jockey in LA. Eddie runs a successful limo service in New York.
Mike speculates that IT has something to do with their career successes.
But what exactly is IT?
”Glamour, he said, was the Gaelic name for the creature which was haunting Derry; other races and other cultures other times had different words for it, but they all mean the same thing. The Plains Indians called it a manitou...These same Indians believe that the spirit of the manitou could sometimes enter them… The Himalayans called it a tallus or taelus, which meant an evil magic being that could read your mind and then assume the shape of the thing you were most afraid of. In Central Europe it had been called eylak, brother of the vurderlak, or vampire. In France it was le loup-garou, or skin-changer, a concept that had been crudely translated as the werewolf, but, Bill told them, le loup-garou could do anything, anything at all: a wolf, a hawk, a sheep, even a bug.”
The glamour creature who haunts Derry prefers the image of Pennywise the Clown because it is primarily interested in attracting and attacking small children. The first victim we are introduced to, at the very beginning of the novel, is Bill’s younger brother George, who is pulled apart by IT while reaching for his paper boat which had fallen into the drain. Only Stephen King can begin a novel with such a horrific murder and keep readers glued to the pages.
We have to know what the hell is going on?
Our band of seven, or as they proclaim themselves The Losers Club, have watched plenty of horror films, so the things they fear have been manifested from the silver screen. Pennywise might morph into a mummy, Frankenstein, a large bird, a werewolf, a leper, a hideous spider, or a large crawling eyeball. Once one of the kids tells the others what he sees, they can see it, too. The creature must adhere to the rules of the game: if IT is a werewolf, for instance, then IT is susceptible to a silver bullet. Adults are incapable of seeing what the kids see. If blood spouts out of a sink and coats the walls and floor, only the kids know it is there. Once the “Losers” leave Derry to pursue their adult lives, they start to forget what happened. It is only when Mike calls them and asks them to come back in 1985 to stop the creature once again that they start to regain their memories.
This time they won’t give up until this hideous evil is vanquished...forever.
”Got to become a child again, he thought incoherently. That’s the only way I can keep IT from driving me crazy. Got to become a kid again...got to stop it. Somehow.”
Sometimes we have to crawl back into our inner child to survive the onslaught of visual overstimulation that can crack an adult brain like a rotten walnut. A young elastic brain does better with a world gone mad. At the end of the final battle, Derry will never be the same, nor will this reader. I, too, hope some of my memories fade as I travel further away from the pages of IT. If you are a fan of the horror genre, you have to read this book. There is no time like the present with the new, highly acclaimed movie out in theaters. Read the book. Watch the movie. Mind wipe. Begin again.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Once I turned the last page of 1,153 pages, I felt like Scribner or Stephen King or someone owed me a t-shirt saying...I survived IT. When I say IT, I’m not just referring to the enormous length of the novel, but also the total sticky, blood encrusted emersion in this epic tale of horror. The book is two novels entwined together. One is set in 1958 when seven children take on this alien creature, and the other is these same children, now adults, returning in 1985 to fight this entity again. A publisher with an eye for more book sales might have convinced a writer, a different writer than Stephen King, to pull these books apart and sell them in two separate novels, but I’m afraid we might have been talking about two three star books instead of one five star book.
IT was meant to be.
King manages to take these seven kids and make them into seven distinct personalities. After spending so much time with them, I feel like I know them better than friends I’ve had for decades. Even as King reintroduces us to them again as adults, we see the personalities of the children, like a hot stamped template, still in the adults. Mike is the only one who stays in Derry, Maine. He becomes the town librarian, and by default, the person who keeps an eye out for signs of the return of IT. The other six all leave and become very successful. Bill becomes a novelist and overcomes his childhood stutter. Beverly becomes a fashion designer, but still can’t shake her need to be with a man who hurts her. Ben loses all that weight he carried as a child and becomes a famous architect. Stan becomes a wealthy accountant. Richie is a disc jockey in LA. Eddie runs a successful limo service in New York.
Mike speculates that IT has something to do with their career successes.
But what exactly is IT?
”Glamour, he said, was the Gaelic name for the creature which was haunting Derry; other races and other cultures other times had different words for it, but they all mean the same thing. The Plains Indians called it a manitou...These same Indians believe that the spirit of the manitou could sometimes enter them… The Himalayans called it a tallus or taelus, which meant an evil magic being that could read your mind and then assume the shape of the thing you were most afraid of. In Central Europe it had been called eylak, brother of the vurderlak, or vampire. In France it was le loup-garou, or skin-changer, a concept that had been crudely translated as the werewolf, but, Bill told them, le loup-garou could do anything, anything at all: a wolf, a hawk, a sheep, even a bug.”
The glamour creature who haunts Derry prefers the image of Pennywise the Clown because it is primarily interested in attracting and attacking small children. The first victim we are introduced to, at the very beginning of the novel, is Bill’s younger brother George, who is pulled apart by IT while reaching for his paper boat which had fallen into the drain. Only Stephen King can begin a novel with such a horrific murder and keep readers glued to the pages.
We have to know what the hell is going on?
Our band of seven, or as they proclaim themselves The Losers Club, have watched plenty of horror films, so the things they fear have been manifested from the silver screen. Pennywise might morph into a mummy, Frankenstein, a large bird, a werewolf, a leper, a hideous spider, or a large crawling eyeball. Once one of the kids tells the others what he sees, they can see it, too. The creature must adhere to the rules of the game: if IT is a werewolf, for instance, then IT is susceptible to a silver bullet. Adults are incapable of seeing what the kids see. If blood spouts out of a sink and coats the walls and floor, only the kids know it is there. Once the “Losers” leave Derry to pursue their adult lives, they start to forget what happened. It is only when Mike calls them and asks them to come back in 1985 to stop the creature once again that they start to regain their memories.
This time they won’t give up until this hideous evil is vanquished...forever.
”Got to become a child again, he thought incoherently. That’s the only way I can keep IT from driving me crazy. Got to become a kid again...got to stop it. Somehow.”
Sometimes we have to crawl back into our inner child to survive the onslaught of visual overstimulation that can crack an adult brain like a rotten walnut. A young elastic brain does better with a world gone mad. At the end of the final battle, Derry will never be the same, nor will this reader. I, too, hope some of my memories fade as I travel further away from the pages of IT. If you are a fan of the horror genre, you have to read this book. There is no time like the present with the new, highly acclaimed movie out in theaters. Read the book. Watch the movie. Mind wipe. Begin again.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
March 7, 2013
Some parts were truly creepy at first and initially, as often happens with King, I couldn't put it down. But then, as often happens with King, it hits a brick wall and becomes so over-long and has so many unnecessary elements that get in the way of the main story that it becomes a bloated, endless chore to finish. People often say they hate the ending of this book...I did not hate it or love it. I had checked out at that point and simply wanted it to be over no matter who lived or died or whether they defeated It or not.
This book is at least 300 pages too long and that is the least that could have been completely cut out without hurting the story in the slightest. Included in those 300+ pages are some particularly disturbing sequences and elements which were just sickening, unnecessary and, to me, actually took away from the main story.
The events and elements that killed "It" for me:
1. A bizarre, out-of-nowhere scene portraying sex play between two male pre-teen, would-be murderous bullies--which had nothing to do with the story and led nowhere.
2. An extended description of animal torture/killing--which stemmed from the bully in the sex-play, which had nothing to do with the story and ultimately, again, was pointless and unnecessary.
3. A detailed description of a kid murdering a baby sibling. No point, nothing to do with the story. Again.
4. The use of the "N" word more in one place than I have ever read or heard in my life combined. Not necessary, nothing to do with the main part of the story.
5. And, the scene which blew me away and pretty much made me feel I had wasted time getting that far in: a gang-bang consisting of nothing but 11 and 12-year-olds. What the F***? And when I say "gang bang" I mean it--six boys banging the girl back-to-back. Only abnormal people do not raise an eyebrow at this scene and try to defend it as being "natural" and "normal." It's neither and most decent people would be bothered by this segment.
So, aside from those main awful things the other annoying elements: the character of Richie. I skipped a lot of his dialogue. I wanted to punch him in the face just for being annoying. And every time he did his "Mexican" voice I just cringed and skipped the next couple lines. Never has a character in a BOOK annoyed me so, so much. I was hoping he would die. Their stupid inside joke of "Beep-beep, Richie." By the twelve thousandth time one of them said this I wanted to just throw the book across the room. Painful to read.
In the end King took a super creepy story and concept which he could have effectively told in probably 500 pages and blew it up to over 1,000 with too much detail in certain parts, too much back story in others and too many subplots which didn't matter. All of which pretty much wiped out any fear or creepiness for me. By the time I got 700 or so pages in I simply was not scared, not creeped out, no longer interested and didn't care how it ended as long as it ended soon.
I am aware that some people will feel that I "just don't get it" with my review and complaints. I am totally fine with that. I am totally fine not "getting it" when it comes to this type of thing. :)
Too bad. Started off as five stars for me and crumbled onto itself into two stars.
This book is at least 300 pages too long and that is the least that could have been completely cut out without hurting the story in the slightest. Included in those 300+ pages are some particularly disturbing sequences and elements which were just sickening, unnecessary and, to me, actually took away from the main story.
The events and elements that killed "It" for me:
1. A bizarre, out-of-nowhere scene portraying sex play between two male pre-teen, would-be murderous bullies--which had nothing to do with the story and led nowhere.
2. An extended description of animal torture/killing--which stemmed from the bully in the sex-play, which had nothing to do with the story and ultimately, again, was pointless and unnecessary.
3. A detailed description of a kid murdering a baby sibling. No point, nothing to do with the story. Again.
4. The use of the "N" word more in one place than I have ever read or heard in my life combined. Not necessary, nothing to do with the main part of the story.
5. And, the scene which blew me away and pretty much made me feel I had wasted time getting that far in: a gang-bang consisting of nothing but 11 and 12-year-olds. What the F***? And when I say "gang bang" I mean it--six boys banging the girl back-to-back. Only abnormal people do not raise an eyebrow at this scene and try to defend it as being "natural" and "normal." It's neither and most decent people would be bothered by this segment.
So, aside from those main awful things the other annoying elements: the character of Richie. I skipped a lot of his dialogue. I wanted to punch him in the face just for being annoying. And every time he did his "Mexican" voice I just cringed and skipped the next couple lines. Never has a character in a BOOK annoyed me so, so much. I was hoping he would die. Their stupid inside joke of "Beep-beep, Richie." By the twelve thousandth time one of them said this I wanted to just throw the book across the room. Painful to read.
In the end King took a super creepy story and concept which he could have effectively told in probably 500 pages and blew it up to over 1,000 with too much detail in certain parts, too much back story in others and too many subplots which didn't matter. All of which pretty much wiped out any fear or creepiness for me. By the time I got 700 or so pages in I simply was not scared, not creeped out, no longer interested and didn't care how it ended as long as it ended soon.
I am aware that some people will feel that I "just don't get it" with my review and complaints. I am totally fine with that. I am totally fine not "getting it" when it comes to this type of thing. :)
Too bad. Started off as five stars for me and crumbled onto itself into two stars.
October 31, 2023
5/5 ⭐
Full review on my Blog: The Dacian She-Wolf 🐺
It took me SO long to finish this monster book that I’ve been carrying around in my backpack for the past six months in every single underground or train ride, but I finally DID IT! I FINISHED IT, YAY ME.
Stephen King never stops to amaze me with his brilliant mind and fabulous stories. I feel like his mind is always restless, always in a good mood to find the worst ways possible to scare the soul out of me.
The King of Horror Stephen King is. No doubt. He is already used to this title and I am sure he accepts nothing less.
It is so far my favourite work of his. I lift it to the rank of a horror masterpiece. It is brilliant, it is amazing, it is incredible. Best horror I've read, hands down. It is macabre, it is sick, it is wrong, but the way it is put together lures you deep into the plot until the moment you realise you cannot get out until you finish. Your way through the plot is the devouring of the story. That’s all.
This book is great, yeah, but have I told you why? No? Let me explain myself then. Everything is put in there with a precise purpose. Nothing is random. Every little detail has its own place in the mechanism of the storyline.
Every single character has a strange particularity that makes him or her unique in his or her weirdness. Bill Denbrough stutters, Eddie Kaspbrak has all the malfunctions in the world, Ben Hanscom is fat, Richie Tozier has a big mouth getting him in big trouble, Mike Hanlon is a ‘black boy’, Stan Uris is ‘a Christ-killing Jew’ and Bev Marsh has some serious Daddy issues. But all of them make a common front, gathering their weirdness and awkwardness and becoming friends and partners in a demon’s annihilation. Which is also a peculiar thing to think about a group of schoolkids. But hey, as long as they face together Henry Bowers and Co., they can face together that ridiculously scary demon of a clown, right?
The research for this masterpiece has been intense because the facts are accurate and also searchable and also, different myths are combined, forming a common body. The myths are uprooted from their grounds and planted back again in the soil of an insignificant American town. How can this not be mind-blowing?
So, with that being said, if you are a horror-freak or if you loved the movie, but did not read the book or if you are just plain curious, then you should totally and definitely check this book out! But first, make sure you are mentally prepared for it, because, well, it is a long, tough ride!
Full review on my Blog: The Dacian She-Wolf 🐺
It took me SO long to finish this monster book that I’ve been carrying around in my backpack for the past six months in every single underground or train ride, but I finally DID IT! I FINISHED IT, YAY ME.
Stephen King never stops to amaze me with his brilliant mind and fabulous stories. I feel like his mind is always restless, always in a good mood to find the worst ways possible to scare the soul out of me.
The King of Horror Stephen King is. No doubt. He is already used to this title and I am sure he accepts nothing less.
It is so far my favourite work of his. I lift it to the rank of a horror masterpiece. It is brilliant, it is amazing, it is incredible. Best horror I've read, hands down. It is macabre, it is sick, it is wrong, but the way it is put together lures you deep into the plot until the moment you realise you cannot get out until you finish. Your way through the plot is the devouring of the story. That’s all.
This book is great, yeah, but have I told you why? No? Let me explain myself then. Everything is put in there with a precise purpose. Nothing is random. Every little detail has its own place in the mechanism of the storyline.
Every single character has a strange particularity that makes him or her unique in his or her weirdness. Bill Denbrough stutters, Eddie Kaspbrak has all the malfunctions in the world, Ben Hanscom is fat, Richie Tozier has a big mouth getting him in big trouble, Mike Hanlon is a ‘black boy’, Stan Uris is ‘a Christ-killing Jew’ and Bev Marsh has some serious Daddy issues. But all of them make a common front, gathering their weirdness and awkwardness and becoming friends and partners in a demon’s annihilation. Which is also a peculiar thing to think about a group of schoolkids. But hey, as long as they face together Henry Bowers and Co., they can face together that ridiculously scary demon of a clown, right?
The research for this masterpiece has been intense because the facts are accurate and also searchable and also, different myths are combined, forming a common body. The myths are uprooted from their grounds and planted back again in the soil of an insignificant American town. How can this not be mind-blowing?
So, with that being said, if you are a horror-freak or if you loved the movie, but did not read the book or if you are just plain curious, then you should totally and definitely check this book out! But first, make sure you are mentally prepared for it, because, well, it is a long, tough ride!
October 28, 2014
I'm not easily scared these days. As a grown woman, the only thing that brings the feeling of dread into my heart is the constant pinging of new work emails requiring my attention when I'm at home, but there was a time when I was a shy, delicate, sweet little girl who was scared of my own shadow.
Proof: not exactly the terror you see haunting the hallowed halls of Goodreads handing out 1 stars like they're candy these days.
It wasn't until I was around 20 that I outgrew my fear of scary creatures and things, and stopped tucking in my toes between the blankets, lest they get eaten by monsters, but before that happened...there was It. I can say with complete confidence that this goddamn book (and the movie) scarred me for life.
A sentiment that I'm sure many of you who have read the book and seen the movie echoes.
I remember the exact moment I saw this movie. It's not something one forgets.
I was 16 years old. I was in Academic Decathlon competition in high school, and after studying for the competition, our little group decided on a movie night. The selection: Stephen King's It.
From the moment that goddamn clown popped up on the screen from beneath the sewer, I knew this was a terrible, no-good, bad idea. I spent the rest of the movie hovering on the edge of my seat, crouched between my best friends, hands either over my eyes or clamped over my mouth to suppress my screams.
I went home. I didn't sleep that night. Neither did I get much sleep for the next two weeks. A few months later, it was winter. Spirit of the season. Clowns can't haunt me when it's Christmas, right? I was brave enough to actually read the book this time.
Bad idea.
So in closing, damn you, Stephen King. Out of all your books, this one has scarred me most.
These days, I maintain a terror of two things: mummies (long story), and clowns. I can no longer visit theme parks at Halloween.
Thank you, Mr. King. You shouldn't have. No, you really shouldn't have.
Proof: not exactly the terror you see haunting the hallowed halls of Goodreads handing out 1 stars like they're candy these days.
It wasn't until I was around 20 that I outgrew my fear of scary creatures and things, and stopped tucking in my toes between the blankets, lest they get eaten by monsters, but before that happened...there was It. I can say with complete confidence that this goddamn book (and the movie) scarred me for life.
A sentiment that I'm sure many of you who have read the book and seen the movie echoes.
I remember the exact moment I saw this movie. It's not something one forgets.
I was 16 years old. I was in Academic Decathlon competition in high school, and after studying for the competition, our little group decided on a movie night. The selection: Stephen King's It.
From the moment that goddamn clown popped up on the screen from beneath the sewer, I knew this was a terrible, no-good, bad idea. I spent the rest of the movie hovering on the edge of my seat, crouched between my best friends, hands either over my eyes or clamped over my mouth to suppress my screams.
I went home. I didn't sleep that night. Neither did I get much sleep for the next two weeks. A few months later, it was winter. Spirit of the season. Clowns can't haunt me when it's Christmas, right? I was brave enough to actually read the book this time.
Bad idea.
So in closing, damn you, Stephen King. Out of all your books, this one has scarred me most.
These days, I maintain a terror of two things: mummies (long story), and clowns. I can no longer visit theme parks at Halloween.
Thank you, Mr. King. You shouldn't have. No, you really shouldn't have.
September 13, 2021
the only clown here is me reading thick books in the exam session
September 21, 2021
UPDATE: $2.99 Kindle US today 9/21/21
Listened to the audio this time and it was awesome The narrator is Steven Weber and he did a great job!
Hello, welcome to Derry.. I'm Pennywise the Clown and at some point, especially if your a kid, I will eat your face off! Have a nice day!
The first time I read this book was in the 6th grade and I had forgotten how good it was! I loved the movie as well, but the book is so much better!
I love how Mr. King goes back and forth from when the friends were kids and to them as adults and what they do in life now, while they are on their way back to Derry. See, when they were young and all became friends, they made a pact that if "IT" ever came back so would they.
IT showed itself to them in many different creeptastic ways but "IT" showed itself more as Pennywise the Clown!
Bill's little brother Georgie was the first one to be.. um.. eaten... by Pennywise. I'm sorry, I don't care how old I am, if I saw a creepy clown down in a drain-gutter thingy (leave me alone, I forgot the name!) I would have ran until I fell over! I mean..no..no...no.. and NO!
Bill, Eddie, Ben, Richie, Stan, Beverly, and Mike are all friends. I love each of their separate stories and I love their friendship together. They are all picked on by the town bully/jerk named Henry Bowers, but when they are together Henry can just go on down the road when the little group gets their courage and attacks Henry and his gang.
I love the camaraderie between the friends and how they believe each others stories of meeting Pennywise, even when he wasn't in clown form. They didn't ridicule each other, they watched out for each other the best they could.
At one point they think they kill ole Pennywise, but after many years and the killing of kids starts happening again, Mike, who stayed in Derry at the library, calls everyone home. It's weird how they all forget anything that ever happened to them until they get that phone call. It's like they were made to forget.
And there is sweet Pennywise to welcome them back! Uggggg, clowns!!!!!!!!
I know there are some people out there that hasn't read the book so I won't give out any spoilers for them, but one of the group commits suicide before anything even gets started and another of the group gets killed before they kill Pennywise for good.. or is IT really dead? I think Mr. King should bring him back with a whole new set of peeps that have to take him out :) Yes, I'm not quite right in the head!
This is a very long book to read, but you know good books like this one really doesn't matter the length, when they are written very well, it just doesn't seem like a tome. Well, with the exception of holding the book up if you have joint issues, just let it rest quietly on your lap tray while you read :)
I didn't get bored not one time in this book, I did, however want to shoot a few people and of course Pennywise... but I digress.
At the end Mr. King wrote:
This book was begun in Bangor, Maine, on September 9th, 1981, and completed in Bangor, Maine, on December 28th, 1985.
That's a good amount of time and would explain how freaking good the book was in all of the detail. The detail was just awesome!
I'm going to leave you with one last thing........
THEY ALL FLOAT DOWN HERE.....
MY BLOG: Melissa Martin's Reading List
Listened to the audio this time and it was awesome The narrator is Steven Weber and he did a great job!
Hello, welcome to Derry.. I'm Pennywise the Clown and at some point, especially if your a kid, I will eat your face off! Have a nice day!
The first time I read this book was in the 6th grade and I had forgotten how good it was! I loved the movie as well, but the book is so much better!
I love how Mr. King goes back and forth from when the friends were kids and to them as adults and what they do in life now, while they are on their way back to Derry. See, when they were young and all became friends, they made a pact that if "IT" ever came back so would they.
IT showed itself to them in many different creeptastic ways but "IT" showed itself more as Pennywise the Clown!
Bill's little brother Georgie was the first one to be.. um.. eaten... by Pennywise. I'm sorry, I don't care how old I am, if I saw a creepy clown down in a drain-gutter thingy (leave me alone, I forgot the name!) I would have ran until I fell over! I mean..no..no...no.. and NO!
Bill, Eddie, Ben, Richie, Stan, Beverly, and Mike are all friends. I love each of their separate stories and I love their friendship together. They are all picked on by the town bully/jerk named Henry Bowers, but when they are together Henry can just go on down the road when the little group gets their courage and attacks Henry and his gang.
I love the camaraderie between the friends and how they believe each others stories of meeting Pennywise, even when he wasn't in clown form. They didn't ridicule each other, they watched out for each other the best they could.
At one point they think they kill ole Pennywise, but after many years and the killing of kids starts happening again, Mike, who stayed in Derry at the library, calls everyone home. It's weird how they all forget anything that ever happened to them until they get that phone call. It's like they were made to forget.
And there is sweet Pennywise to welcome them back! Uggggg, clowns!!!!!!!!
I know there are some people out there that hasn't read the book so I won't give out any spoilers for them, but one of the group commits suicide before anything even gets started and another of the group gets killed before they kill Pennywise for good.. or is IT really dead? I think Mr. King should bring him back with a whole new set of peeps that have to take him out :) Yes, I'm not quite right in the head!
This is a very long book to read, but you know good books like this one really doesn't matter the length, when they are written very well, it just doesn't seem like a tome. Well, with the exception of holding the book up if you have joint issues, just let it rest quietly on your lap tray while you read :)
I didn't get bored not one time in this book, I did, however want to shoot a few people and of course Pennywise... but I digress.
At the end Mr. King wrote:
This book was begun in Bangor, Maine, on September 9th, 1981, and completed in Bangor, Maine, on December 28th, 1985.
That's a good amount of time and would explain how freaking good the book was in all of the detail. The detail was just awesome!
I'm going to leave you with one last thing........
THEY ALL FLOAT DOWN HERE.....
MY BLOG: Melissa Martin's Reading List
June 2, 2024
I got my first copy of IT when I was 10 years old. The checkout counter loomed above me and the cashier said "You don't want to read this." I assured her I did and she reluctantly let me purchase it. I'd already seen the mini series with Tim Curry and was fully prepared for scares after devouring dozens of Goosebumps and Fear Streets. When I got home, I marveled at possessing a book of such girth.
Mom was not happy with my reading selection in the same way she wasn’t happy with me reading Goosebumps. The cover art was "ugly" and, furthermore, anything but the Bible or Little House on the Prairie was trash. Nevertheless, she still awarded me a penny a page for every book I read. I don't think she connected the dots that a book with a clown on the cover was any different than other scary kid titles like Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter.
With the fantasy of receiving ten bucks after reading this 1000+ pager, I got started. It wasn't easy. Adult minds were still foreign to me and experiencing this blend of childhood and adulthood through King's insurmountable character development was startling. Significantly more startling than when Georgie gets gobbled up. I couldn't believe all the crap adults had to deal with. How would I end up in 27 years?
I stopped reading around page 250 after Beverly Marsh was introduced. The scene was familiar from the movie, but I realized even then that movies can never fully depict domestic abuse. Of all the scary scenes from IT, Beverly's escape from her husband remains the most horrifying. At this point I basically assumed that married couples were eternally happy. Yet here was King describing this very real scenario of a woman trapped in her past, simultaneously turned on and terrified by her spouse. Reading it at 10 didn't scar me, it just made me feel older and wiser. I put the book down then only because it was draining to learn so much. Like reading a textbook.
Fast forward 11 years to when I'm 21, about to graduate college and about to move 1,000 miles away from my family. On a subconscious level, I think, I realized it was time to revisit IT. Now, at this point in my life, I needed a textbook. I needed to know how to fight demons and escape the past, but not forget about it either. I needed to learn how to survive. That summer I didn't stop at page 250. I read it to the end, and it was exactly what I needed.
Funny - now, nearly 11 years after that - I feel IT's calling again. The new movies are okay, but they aren't a substitute. They provide a good gist of what's in the book, but I feel like King's text actually holds the secrets of the universe. Reading it every 11 years might just be the tradition I need. Because let's face it, I need IT in my thirties just like I needed IT in my twenties, just like I needed IT at ten. Our minds change, our bodies change, but so much remains the same.
Mom was not happy with my reading selection in the same way she wasn’t happy with me reading Goosebumps. The cover art was "ugly" and, furthermore, anything but the Bible or Little House on the Prairie was trash. Nevertheless, she still awarded me a penny a page for every book I read. I don't think she connected the dots that a book with a clown on the cover was any different than other scary kid titles like Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter.
With the fantasy of receiving ten bucks after reading this 1000+ pager, I got started. It wasn't easy. Adult minds were still foreign to me and experiencing this blend of childhood and adulthood through King's insurmountable character development was startling. Significantly more startling than when Georgie gets gobbled up. I couldn't believe all the crap adults had to deal with. How would I end up in 27 years?
I stopped reading around page 250 after Beverly Marsh was introduced. The scene was familiar from the movie, but I realized even then that movies can never fully depict domestic abuse. Of all the scary scenes from IT, Beverly's escape from her husband remains the most horrifying. At this point I basically assumed that married couples were eternally happy. Yet here was King describing this very real scenario of a woman trapped in her past, simultaneously turned on and terrified by her spouse. Reading it at 10 didn't scar me, it just made me feel older and wiser. I put the book down then only because it was draining to learn so much. Like reading a textbook.
Fast forward 11 years to when I'm 21, about to graduate college and about to move 1,000 miles away from my family. On a subconscious level, I think, I realized it was time to revisit IT. Now, at this point in my life, I needed a textbook. I needed to know how to fight demons and escape the past, but not forget about it either. I needed to learn how to survive. That summer I didn't stop at page 250. I read it to the end, and it was exactly what I needed.
Funny - now, nearly 11 years after that - I feel IT's calling again. The new movies are okay, but they aren't a substitute. They provide a good gist of what's in the book, but I feel like King's text actually holds the secrets of the universe. Reading it every 11 years might just be the tradition I need. Because let's face it, I need IT in my thirties just like I needed IT in my twenties, just like I needed IT at ten. Our minds change, our bodies change, but so much remains the same.
September 24, 2022
It is finished.
Why yes, I did just complete my longest read to date. I simultaneously feel relieved and accomplished, drained and fulfilled. There are few authors who can successfully deliver such conflicting feelings, which is why he's one of the most well known names in the fiction world. I feel as if I could write an entire book about this tender and terrifying "coming of age" tale, but I also feel as if all the umph has left my body for the moment. Definitely my favorite King novel that I've read so far (UPDATE- that award now goes to 11/22/63) and I hope to revisit this review after a time of processing and reflection to add more thoughts. Thanks for all the hand holding and encouragement you all provided along the way!
Why yes, I did just complete my longest read to date. I simultaneously feel relieved and accomplished, drained and fulfilled. There are few authors who can successfully deliver such conflicting feelings, which is why he's one of the most well known names in the fiction world. I feel as if I could write an entire book about this tender and terrifying "coming of age" tale, but I also feel as if all the umph has left my body for the moment. Definitely my favorite King novel that I've read so far (UPDATE- that award now goes to 11/22/63) and I hope to revisit this review after a time of processing and reflection to add more thoughts. Thanks for all the hand holding and encouragement you all provided along the way!
September 26, 2021
It´s not as if it wasn´t just an old Lovecraftian big ones cosmic horror consuming the flesh of mind opened, quirky, annoying (thanks for that in this case), kids but there is so much more sociocultural evolution, big history, the interconnection between childhood trauma and adult issues, banality of evil, small town horrors, and hidden depths in this epic world literature supernova overkill. But let´s look at its´ parts, vivisecting it while it´s still alive, begging, and screaming, one after the other.
Sociocultural evolution
There is much dark American history, especially racism and social and economic inequality, lurking in the backgrounds of many of the characters, both protagonists and antagonists. Discrimination, poverty, and fuel of hate, racism, and sexism with a grain of faith as disgusting topping, make many of the characters´ motivations credible and comprehensible, no matter how wrong and evil they might be. The demolition of the American dream by showing the true face of what lies behind the superficial, bigoted happy go lucky unicorn rainbow, but still no free meals for everyone included, train.
Big history
Maybe I´m exaggerating (again or as usual), reading too much into it, and it´s also close to the same as sociocultural evolution I just mentioned, but it shows retrospectives of not just generations, but centuries and links the manifestations of destruction, exploitation, and despair to the big milestones of history, from robber barons to KKK to neoliberalism. It knows that injustice and inequality are the perfect breeding grounds for deliberately uneducated, poor people that get exploited by a rich, degenerated elite (also known as world history) and that any kind of sick ideology, belief, or faith grows best on huge loads of compost or, more directly, the mental shit and garbage humans love to produce en masse. There, the plant of rape, torture, and secret cellar prison snuff chambers can grow best and produce the most disgusting fruits.
The banality and philosophy of evil is big here too, but that would go far into far too many fields, so let's stay with how King shows the dysfunctionally working systems by focusing on the most hushed up topics, strangely and telling especially the 3 big party and small talk nonos, politics, faith and the ultimate evil in the form of the almighty deity mister mammon, money, I mean economics. No matter if one begins at the stinking top with macroeconomic fringe voodoo science or with the little matchstick girl freezing to death, the result of the immense moral and ethical shallows of our society are breaching the varnish of mass hallucinated Potemkin´ everything is fine villages everywhere. It is full of manifestations of both Kings´genius and immense societal worth, because he has opened the eyes of millions of people and made them more critical and mind opened towards any kind of institutionalized, big party or small club, madness.
Childhood trauma becoming adult issues
Everything is interconnected to epigenetics and genetics and close to nobody can escape her/his/ its genetic and upbringing destiny. By jumping between the adult and the kid perspective, King draws a picture of how the haunting of a bad childhood can turn the warm pillow of being loved and protected into a demon hunted, newer ending, PTSD horror show that comes crawling into each nights´ dreams and daily associations triggered by sudden memories, words, senses, etc. That´s maybe the most important message to take from this read for oneself while the big history and sociocultural evolution topics are more meta for the masses. No matter, how much discipline, self improvement, fringe self help, yoga Buddhism dissolution of ego stuff, one puts into the development of ones´ personality, the past keeps following like a dark of white shadow, offering the support and security of healthy, happy parents in a good society or the terror and trauma of mentally unstable or ill, poor, addicted parents filled with hate and anger because of the dire circumstances of their own lives.
Small town horrors
Of course people in small towns seem friendlier, less aggressive, or even arrogant, than people living in metropolitan areas. What would the neighbors think if one would lets the poor hobo, immigrant, junkie, etc. die on the front yard, that just wouldn´t really assort well with the garden gnomes and ruin the lawns karma, not to speak of the smell. Some self made (with love) secret hobo, junkie, etc. mass graves, next to the hate crime victims´ illegal dumpings, are the real problem here, because the conservative and intolerant mentality against anything unknown and foreign leads to communities that shine happy and open minded on the outside, but are completely rotten, degenerated, and murderous in the dark, hidden reality. Especially the bigoted, fake community and ideal world illusion behind everyone hating everyone and especially new ones is what makes suburbia, small towns, and the countryside idyll so perfectly Texas chainsaw massacre style predestined. Working together to kill, eat, and repeat.
So what is it altogether? Is it the inherent evil and devilish in all intelligent species, perverting the survival of the fittest to torture of the most unfit? Would a bonobo style (oh yeah), post scarcity, fantasy love elve, alien, or future society leave no breeding grounds for the monster that feeds on human suffering? Could a better, fairer, higher evolved form of human or alien species let the immortal clown cry for all eternities, because he couldn´t provoke one insult, attack, or argument that exponentially escalates towards mass murdering? Or is the bad monkey gene (or bad dolphin, ant, crow, whatever intelligent animal one might prefer) so strong that it will always find subjects enjoying and loving to hurt, sack, and rape? Is it a manifestation of the malice of the human soul that couldn´t exist without the inbuilt madness or is it an outer influence that seduces the good people to do bad things? Heavy loads coming across this review road, also highly subjective and depending on which philosophy brainwashed the dear readers´ mind towards misanthropy or at least not eating humans. Too often, it should stay something special together with the loved ones.
Drugs, prescription drugs, and alcohol certainly played a role here too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen...
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen...
because one can´t say how King would have written throughout the late 70s and 80s without that special, inspirational fuel juice, powder, etc. I´ve read most of his works, early, addicted, and sober and there are huge differences between the early, Bradbury and Lovecraft inspired works, his high times and the longest, sober period. Try reading his works, maybe switching between early, wasted, and clean again, and see what difference it makes. One could add a fourth, old King period, but I haven´t read enough of that works (or can remember enough about the works I´ve read) to put it in the big picture and I honestly don´t like his newer books as much as the classics, something has changed, but I can´t put my finger on what exactly happened. They are still great, but I am kind of missing the „in your face full frontal attack“, the pure horror elements, the sheer roughness and wildness, and think that the focus has switched to too much characterization with too little dynamic plot action and horror world building.
Trivial, subjective, anecdotal, drivel, notes worthless for anyone else, please don´t waste your irretrievable lifetime. You should really consider not reading that. Still there? Sigh. At least it´s not long.
I´ve first read it a long, long time ago, I don´t even know if it is 10 or 15 years (25 or 20 years old at this moment) and it rocked my world so much, it was one of the most immersive reading experiences I ever had, a world shattering, eyeopening, incredible masterpiece of one of the greatest writers of all times. I vividly remembered so many aspects, characters, settings, scenes, dialogues for a very long time, and it just didn´t get into my head how King did this. Rereading it, older, embittered, and stupider that I am now, I see all the extra lawyers of innuendos, social criticism, and especially the real red line and plot, the impact of how early years form creepy, disturbing adults. Just like me.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
Sociocultural evolution
There is much dark American history, especially racism and social and economic inequality, lurking in the backgrounds of many of the characters, both protagonists and antagonists. Discrimination, poverty, and fuel of hate, racism, and sexism with a grain of faith as disgusting topping, make many of the characters´ motivations credible and comprehensible, no matter how wrong and evil they might be. The demolition of the American dream by showing the true face of what lies behind the superficial, bigoted happy go lucky unicorn rainbow, but still no free meals for everyone included, train.
Big history
Maybe I´m exaggerating (again or as usual), reading too much into it, and it´s also close to the same as sociocultural evolution I just mentioned, but it shows retrospectives of not just generations, but centuries and links the manifestations of destruction, exploitation, and despair to the big milestones of history, from robber barons to KKK to neoliberalism. It knows that injustice and inequality are the perfect breeding grounds for deliberately uneducated, poor people that get exploited by a rich, degenerated elite (also known as world history) and that any kind of sick ideology, belief, or faith grows best on huge loads of compost or, more directly, the mental shit and garbage humans love to produce en masse. There, the plant of rape, torture, and secret cellar prison snuff chambers can grow best and produce the most disgusting fruits.
The banality and philosophy of evil is big here too, but that would go far into far too many fields, so let's stay with how King shows the dysfunctionally working systems by focusing on the most hushed up topics, strangely and telling especially the 3 big party and small talk nonos, politics, faith and the ultimate evil in the form of the almighty deity mister mammon, money, I mean economics. No matter if one begins at the stinking top with macroeconomic fringe voodoo science or with the little matchstick girl freezing to death, the result of the immense moral and ethical shallows of our society are breaching the varnish of mass hallucinated Potemkin´ everything is fine villages everywhere. It is full of manifestations of both Kings´genius and immense societal worth, because he has opened the eyes of millions of people and made them more critical and mind opened towards any kind of institutionalized, big party or small club, madness.
Childhood trauma becoming adult issues
Everything is interconnected to epigenetics and genetics and close to nobody can escape her/his/ its genetic and upbringing destiny. By jumping between the adult and the kid perspective, King draws a picture of how the haunting of a bad childhood can turn the warm pillow of being loved and protected into a demon hunted, newer ending, PTSD horror show that comes crawling into each nights´ dreams and daily associations triggered by sudden memories, words, senses, etc. That´s maybe the most important message to take from this read for oneself while the big history and sociocultural evolution topics are more meta for the masses. No matter, how much discipline, self improvement, fringe self help, yoga Buddhism dissolution of ego stuff, one puts into the development of ones´ personality, the past keeps following like a dark of white shadow, offering the support and security of healthy, happy parents in a good society or the terror and trauma of mentally unstable or ill, poor, addicted parents filled with hate and anger because of the dire circumstances of their own lives.
Small town horrors
Of course people in small towns seem friendlier, less aggressive, or even arrogant, than people living in metropolitan areas. What would the neighbors think if one would lets the poor hobo, immigrant, junkie, etc. die on the front yard, that just wouldn´t really assort well with the garden gnomes and ruin the lawns karma, not to speak of the smell. Some self made (with love) secret hobo, junkie, etc. mass graves, next to the hate crime victims´ illegal dumpings, are the real problem here, because the conservative and intolerant mentality against anything unknown and foreign leads to communities that shine happy and open minded on the outside, but are completely rotten, degenerated, and murderous in the dark, hidden reality. Especially the bigoted, fake community and ideal world illusion behind everyone hating everyone and especially new ones is what makes suburbia, small towns, and the countryside idyll so perfectly Texas chainsaw massacre style predestined. Working together to kill, eat, and repeat.
So what is it altogether? Is it the inherent evil and devilish in all intelligent species, perverting the survival of the fittest to torture of the most unfit? Would a bonobo style (oh yeah), post scarcity, fantasy love elve, alien, or future society leave no breeding grounds for the monster that feeds on human suffering? Could a better, fairer, higher evolved form of human or alien species let the immortal clown cry for all eternities, because he couldn´t provoke one insult, attack, or argument that exponentially escalates towards mass murdering? Or is the bad monkey gene (or bad dolphin, ant, crow, whatever intelligent animal one might prefer) so strong that it will always find subjects enjoying and loving to hurt, sack, and rape? Is it a manifestation of the malice of the human soul that couldn´t exist without the inbuilt madness or is it an outer influence that seduces the good people to do bad things? Heavy loads coming across this review road, also highly subjective and depending on which philosophy brainwashed the dear readers´ mind towards misanthropy or at least not eating humans. Too often, it should stay something special together with the loved ones.
Drugs, prescription drugs, and alcohol certainly played a role here too
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen...
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen...
because one can´t say how King would have written throughout the late 70s and 80s without that special, inspirational fuel juice, powder, etc. I´ve read most of his works, early, addicted, and sober and there are huge differences between the early, Bradbury and Lovecraft inspired works, his high times and the longest, sober period. Try reading his works, maybe switching between early, wasted, and clean again, and see what difference it makes. One could add a fourth, old King period, but I haven´t read enough of that works (or can remember enough about the works I´ve read) to put it in the big picture and I honestly don´t like his newer books as much as the classics, something has changed, but I can´t put my finger on what exactly happened. They are still great, but I am kind of missing the „in your face full frontal attack“, the pure horror elements, the sheer roughness and wildness, and think that the focus has switched to too much characterization with too little dynamic plot action and horror world building.
Trivial, subjective, anecdotal, drivel, notes worthless for anyone else, please don´t waste your irretrievable lifetime. You should really consider not reading that. Still there? Sigh. At least it´s not long.
I´ve first read it a long, long time ago, I don´t even know if it is 10 or 15 years (25 or 20 years old at this moment) and it rocked my world so much, it was one of the most immersive reading experiences I ever had, a world shattering, eyeopening, incredible masterpiece of one of the greatest writers of all times. I vividly remembered so many aspects, characters, settings, scenes, dialogues for a very long time, and it just didn´t get into my head how King did this. Rereading it, older, embittered, and stupider that I am now, I see all the extra lawyers of innuendos, social criticism, and especially the real red line and plot, the impact of how early years form creepy, disturbing adults. Just like me.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
December 31, 2022
تستطيع ان تقراها في اي مكان..على الشاطئ..في منزلك..في الكافيه..اوحتى في المواصلات..
ولكن ستظل اسيرا هناك مع الابطال السبعة في ديري/ماين. .لشهر كامل احسست انني اعيش في تلك البلدة الملعونة الصغيرة
في قراءاتك قد تصادف البيت الملعون..الغابةالملعونة
لكن بلدة كاملة؟؟ باهلها و أطفالها و قفرها و حوانيتها ومنازلها..بل وصرفها الصحى
الرعب هنا ليس اسم اللعبة🎃
.. بقدر ما هو الانتصار على مخاوفك و هزائمك..
الاحتفاظ ببرائتك لاطول وقت مع مواجهة لاسوأ كوابيسك ..و طوال 1115 صفحة ستتلاحق انفاسك مع سبعة من الكبار - الاطفال ..ستعاني معهم اصعب تجارب
coming of age
الاحداث تبدا في منتصف الخمسينات وتنتهي في منتصف الثمانينات..بدا كينج في كتابتها في سن 34 وانتهى منها في سن 38..و هي الرواية الوحيدة التي احسست ان منتصف الثلاثينات هو العمر الانسب لقرائتها..حتى نتمكن من هضمها بسهولة فهي اطول وافضل اعمال كينج المنفردة
..والفيلم القديم ظلمها كثيرا.. اما الفيلم الجديد فقد انصفها بنسبة 70%ا لأن هذه الرواية تحتفظ لمن يقرأها بسر لن يصلح ابدا ابدا للعرض في اي فيلم
الصبيان الستة ..مع الفتاة الوحيدة بيفرلي.. جمعوا كل ما قد يسئ للاطفال اثناء تربيتهم
..فهناك المعقد من سمنته واخر ب��بب تأتأته وهناك القلق من ديانته
واخر منطو بسبب ضعفه ومرضه...و ماذا نقول عن مايك ذو الأصول الأفريقية ؟
اما بيفرلي و اسرتها المعيبة فحدث و لاحرج
و لن ننسى فظاعة ردود افعال المراهقين الامريكيين..و معاركهم و استفزازهم المميت احيانا
الرواية تبدأ بمقتل طفل في السادسة..و يقين أخيه الاكبر ان مهرجا" قد اغراه ببالونات و أخذه للمجارير أسفل البلدة
..و بمعاونة أصدقاؤه يحاولون اتقاء شر الوحش..بل و القضاء عليه
حقا كانت وسيلة انتصارهم الاولى من اغرب ما قد تقرأه في حياتك..و لكنه 👑كينج
dell keyboard spacebar sticking
التجاوزات المريعة في الرواية لم تأت الا على لسان السفاحين والمجانين.. وكان من الصعب اخراجها عن سياق الرواية
هي الرواية الوحيدة التي بدأت في ترجمتها لاقضي معها اطول وقت
اما عن النهاية فحدثني هنا عن النهايات المنطقية والعدالة الشعرية
هذا لينك لمراجعة صديقي ايمن جمعة فيه تحليل متكامل للابطال التسعة
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
ولكن ستظل اسيرا هناك مع الابطال السبعة في ديري/ماين. .لشهر كامل احسست انني اعيش في تلك البلدة الملعونة الصغيرة
في قراءاتك قد تصادف البيت الملعون..الغابةالملعونة
لكن بلدة كاملة؟؟ باهلها و أطفالها و قفرها و حوانيتها ومنازلها..بل وصرفها الصحى
الرعب هنا ليس اسم اللعبة🎃
.. بقدر ما هو الانتصار على مخاوفك و هزائمك..
الاحتفاظ ببرائتك لاطول وقت مع مواجهة لاسوأ كوابيسك ..و طوال 1115 صفحة ستتلاحق انفاسك مع سبعة من الكبار - الاطفال ..ستعاني معهم اصعب تجارب
coming of age
الاحداث تبدا في منتصف الخمسينات وتنتهي في منتصف الثمانينات..بدا كينج في كتابتها في سن 34 وانتهى منها في سن 38..و هي الرواية الوحيدة التي احسست ان منتصف الثلاثينات هو العمر الانسب لقرائتها..حتى نتمكن من هضمها بسهولة فهي اطول وافضل اعمال كينج المنفردة
..والفيلم القديم ظلمها كثيرا.. اما الفيلم الجديد فقد انصفها بنسبة 70%ا لأن هذه الرواية تحتفظ لمن يقرأها بسر لن يصلح ابدا ابدا للعرض في اي فيلم
الصبيان الستة ..مع الفتاة الوحيدة بيفرلي.. جمعوا كل ما قد يسئ للاطفال اثناء تربيتهم
..فهناك المعقد من سمنته واخر ب��بب تأتأته وهناك القلق من ديانته
واخر منطو بسبب ضعفه ومرضه...و ماذا نقول عن مايك ذو الأصول الأفريقية ؟
اما بيفرلي و اسرتها المعيبة فحدث و لاحرج
و لن ننسى فظاعة ردود افعال المراهقين الامريكيين..و معاركهم و استفزازهم المميت احيانا
الرواية تبدأ بمقتل طفل في السادسة..و يقين أخيه الاكبر ان مهرجا" قد اغراه ببالونات و أخذه للمجارير أسفل البلدة
..و بمعاونة أصدقاؤه يحاولون اتقاء شر الوحش..بل و القضاء عليه
حقا كانت وسيلة انتصارهم الاولى من اغرب ما قد تقرأه في حياتك..و لكنه 👑كينج
dell keyboard spacebar sticking
التجاوزات المريعة في الرواية لم تأت الا على لسان السفاحين والمجانين.. وكان من الصعب اخراجها عن سياق الرواية
هي الرواية الوحيدة التي بدأت في ترجمتها لاقضي معها اطول وقت
اما عن النهاية فحدثني هنا عن النهايات المنطقية والعدالة الشعرية
هذا لينك لمراجعة صديقي ايمن جمعة فيه تحليل متكامل للابطال التسعة
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
February 2, 2018
Throughout the book, I was going to give it 4 stars. It was suspenseful, there was a sense of dread with some truly scary scenes. King is very good at describing how children would think and make us feel their fears. It was really long with A LOT of descriptions but it was still very enjoyable.
The ending totally ruined it for me...
Review: https://youtu.be/TkxckLFcKYE
The ending totally ruined it for me...
Review: https://youtu.be/TkxckLFcKYE
June 30, 2023
A book that I consider a modern classic of the horror genre; a book in 2017 that went on to became a part of our global culture as a result of the latest movie version. Seven children spend a terrifying summer together in their home town of Derry, a summer that was devastating to their lives and their community, yet also supposedly completely unforgettable - yet nearly all of them forgot!
27 years later, having left Derry and that entire summer's memories behind, they start feeling the call to return, a process that sees their memories begin to return of that summer, that summer of It! It all began with a paper boat...
A book that has always resonated with me focusing on that otherworld that is children's reality, a reality that sits alongside, but also out of sight of adults' reality, and exists in the real world too! This concept is underlined splendidly in that Pennywise and its machinations can only be seen, and dealt with, by children. Stephen King, yet again, brings 1950s America to life - bringing discord, damnation, disaster and death to many in Derry, in the present and pasts, plural! With so much hate, horror, gore and violence adjoined to so much heart, love, belief and loyalty, this book, this saga is an amazing feat of creativity.
Stephen King's It is such an important part of the horror genre, as it so well balances human and non-human evil, young love and adult passion, and most of all, one of King's most endearing themes, the power of unity and friendship. 9.5 out of 12, just missing out on the Five Stars, 'cos let's face it, it could have ended in many different and possible more interesting ways in the 1950s story.
2002 and 2016 read
27 years later, having left Derry and that entire summer's memories behind, they start feeling the call to return, a process that sees their memories begin to return of that summer, that summer of It! It all began with a paper boat...
A book that has always resonated with me focusing on that otherworld that is children's reality, a reality that sits alongside, but also out of sight of adults' reality, and exists in the real world too! This concept is underlined splendidly in that Pennywise and its machinations can only be seen, and dealt with, by children. Stephen King, yet again, brings 1950s America to life - bringing discord, damnation, disaster and death to many in Derry, in the present and pasts, plural! With so much hate, horror, gore and violence adjoined to so much heart, love, belief and loyalty, this book, this saga is an amazing feat of creativity.
Stephen King's It is such an important part of the horror genre, as it so well balances human and non-human evil, young love and adult passion, and most of all, one of King's most endearing themes, the power of unity and friendship. 9.5 out of 12, just missing out on the Five Stars, 'cos let's face it, it could have ended in many different and possible more interesting ways in the 1950s story.
2002 and 2016 read
September 24, 2022
"Maybe there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart."
I first came across IT more than two decades ago, just a few years older than the Losers Club kids, and have reread it several times since, and it’s never lost its magic, no matter how old I am or where in life I am. To me, a Constant Reader of Uncle Stevie’s prodigious literary output, it’s quintessential King, King at his best.
It’s not perfect - and yet it is. Yes, it may be overlong, and at times really feels drug-fueled, and has a few scenes that really should have been cut out at some point — but it’s still King at his absolute best, and he excels at his trademark themes. A town, haunted by its monsters - both human and very much not so - and with enough skeletons in the closet to fill a boneyard. The mundane becoming truly unsettlingly frightening - not in the startling way that slasher stories depend on, but that bone-deep uncomfortable dread that hits slower and always below the belt. The nostalgia for childhood and that unbelievable magic of it — but nothing for the murky ugly time that childhood was set in.
“And almost idly, in a kind of side-thought, Eddie discovered one of his childhood’s great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.”
———
“We lie best when we lie to ourselves.”
And despite the terrifying not-quite clown Pennywise and that paper boat and “we all float down here” red balloon that are familiar to most people through the magic of cultural osmosis, it’s not what I remember the most. No, it’s the incredible intensity of those childhood friendship bonds that connect the Losers Club, the bonds that stretch so deep, the colors and clarity of childhood — the time not of rainbows and butterflies but of becoming a true person, a real “you”, of realization that magic exists and monsters are real and hopefully they can be beaten, and that the world has teeth and is not afraid to bite, but hopefully you are not alone standing against it. So intense of a time when you are both helpless and often powerless and yet incredibly resilient. Because we all know - “[…] What can be done when you’re eleven can often never be done again.”
“And maybe, Richie thought, that's the scary part. How you didn't stop being a kid all at once, with a big explosive bang, like one of that clown's trick balloons. The kid in you just leaked out, like the air of a tire.”
This book is about the end of childhood — but not quite the loss of innocence (as books like this can often be) — because that’s already been lost, been slowly chipped away by the human monsters - abuse, bullying, neglect, prejudice, and casual cruelty. But in every ending there’s a beginning of something new, and the forces you withstood at eleven may be coming at you again when you’re forty, and it’s your childhood and your friends and belief in them that may just carry you through.
“[…] It occurred to him that kids were better at almost dying, and they were also better at incorporating the inexplicable into their lives. They believed implicitly in the invisible world. Miracles both bright and dark were to be taken into consideration, oh yes, most certainly, but they by no means stopped the world. A sudden upheaval of beauty or terror at ten did not preclude an extra cheesedog or two for lunch at noon.
But when you grew up, all that changed. You no longer lay awake in your bed, sure something was crouching in the closet or scratching at the window ... but when something did happen, something beyond rational explanation, the circuits overloaded. The axons and dendrites got hot. You started to jitter and jive, you started to shake rattle and roll, your imagination started to hop and bop and do the funky chicken all over your nerves. You couldn’t just incorporate what had happened into your life experience. It didn’t digest. Your mind kept coming back to it, pawing it lightly like a kitten with a ball of string ... until eventually, of course, you either went crazy or got to a place where it was impossible for you to function.”
Welcome to the Losers Club.
5 stars.
“I loved you guys, you know.
I loved you so much.”
—————
—————
“Or so Bill Denbrough sometimes thinks on those early mornings after dreaming, when he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends with whom he shared it.”
——————
Also posted on my blog.
——————
2022: Buddy read with Dennis.
July 10, 2020
”For 27 years, I dreamt of you. I missed you. I craved you.”
-Pennywise, IT
Last night, I watched IT: Chapter 2. And holy sh*t, you guys. I did not expect the horror, sadness and raw emotion this movie gave me. I have so many thoughts and feelings to share so this review
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE REVIEW HEAD WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR IT: CHAPTER 2! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!
[Art by 800LBProductions]
I’d like to start at the beginning (a very good place to start). Those of you who’ve read the book will remember that the book opens with a murder. Two gays, Adrian and… I forget the other guys name. They kiss and then homophobia strikes. Adrian gets pushed off a bridge and eaten by Pennywise. It was extremely sad and slightly triggering. I was surprised at how much it affected me. I think it didn’t hurt as much when I read it for two reasons.
1). Back in December, I hadn’t accepted my sexuality yet.
2). Now that I have accepted and embraced my sexuality, I love seeing gay couples.
My heart is very ship-happy and so when I see two guys together my heart gets attached. This happened very quickly with Adrian and the Other-Guy-Whose-Name-I-Can’t-Remember and seeing the bullying and assault just made me feel so sad and helpless. I appreciate the scene because it was kind of a warning of what was to come. It shouted If you can’t handle this scene, get the f**k out
Now, we obviously have to talk about the scariness level of IT 2. On a scale from one to ten, IT 2 is a
Halfway through the movie, I went to use the bathroom and, after I finished washing my hands, I backed up to an automatic air dryer and it turned on. I jumped about a foot in the air. It scared me so bad. I was that jumpy. AND I DON’T GET SCARED. There is so much gore and violence but the worst part is the jump scares.
I really wanted to discuss the differences between the book and the movie because there were A LOT! Some were good and some were bad. The first one is the mythology behind IT and the Ritual of Chud. They greatly simplified it and made it seem less… weird. They completely cut out the giant turtle vomiting up the universe, though they did give it a nod in the first movie. The ritual also took place physically. As in the losers had to actually run around and fight whereas, in the book they just stood and battled It psychically. I was very relieved that they changed those details.
Another huge thing they changed was Richie. In the movie, it is never said but heavily implied that Richie is gay. Listen, I love to see those representations in movies and books BUT whoever decided to make Richie gay (I’ve heard rumors that it was Bill Hader, the actor who plays adult Richie) totally pulled a J.K. Rowling. I totally get that they were trying to make the movie a little more up to date but it (in my opinion) failed and completely rubbed me the wrong way.
Finally, I’d like to discuss the ending. It was surprisingly sappy. It wasn’t completely horrible. I really loved all the closure and positive themes they fit in.
Bottom Line:
5 Stars
Age Rating: [ R ]
Content Screening (Spoilers) - Educational Value (2/5) - [Teamwork] ~ Positive Messages - [Strength in numbers. Being proud of yourself.] ~ Violence (5/5) - [Attacks, limbs being bitten off, gore, Violent homophobia, physical and emotional abuse, suicide, creepy creatures, zombies] ~ Sex (2/5) - [Kissing scenes, sexual and crude jokes.] ~ Language (4/5) - [F**k, sh*t, b*tch, p*ssy, asshole, prick, damn, god and Jesus Christ] ~ Drinking/Drugs (3/5) - [Underage/of age smoking, drinking. Medicinal drugs but no illegal ones]
Content and Trigger Warnings: Suicide (character shown with bloody wrists), Homophobia, Gay character murdered, hypochondria, loss of friends/loved ones, depression, physical abuse, verbal abuse, extremely graphic gore and violence, jump scares, flashing lights (for those with photosensitivity), drowning, blood, spiders, zombies, mental hospitals, headless and decomposing bodies
Cover: 4/5 ~ Characters: 5/5 ~ Plot: 5/5 ~ Actors: 4/5
Release Date: September 6th, 2019 (fun little easter egg 9+0+6+2+0+1+9= 27)
Company: Warner Brothers
Genre: Horror/Fantasy
*************
[9/6/2019] - F*********KKKKKKKK THE MOVIE WAS SO GOOD AND SCARY AND SAD AND HAPPY AND AMAZINNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'M SO FULL OF EMOTIONS!!!!! HERE IS A PICTURE OF JAY RYAN'S ABS TO CALM US DOWN:
ahhh that's better
*************
[9/5/2019] - I found an adult (Thank you, thank youuuu, Ms. L!!!) I will be watching the movie tomorrow evening and I CANNOT EVEN! I AM SO EXCITEDDDDDDDD
*************
I have a dilemma... I want to see IT: Chapter 2... but I'm am not 17 so that means I need an adult to see an R rated movie (which is so dumb, imo)... THE STRUGGGLLLEE
*************
THE FINAL TRAILER HAS BEEN RELEASED TO THE WORLD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhJ5P...
*************
Just finished the movie. Holy sh*t! It was amazing. I am so excited for It: Chapter Two
*************
Found this online! It's so hilarious:
*************
IT: Chapter 2 trailer has dropped!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqUop...
*************
We all float down here.
I take back everything I said about Stephen King being overrated. This book a masterpiece of not only horror but also coming of age and science fiction.
Even so, it was really challenging for me to listen to this because of the way it was told. That is; Then and now style. Except unlike the usual T&N style, you aren't told when is then and when is now. You just had to figure it out which was really frustrating.
I was pleasantly surprised to find I didn't know the full story of IT. You see, I was too afraid to actually read the book so I read the plot in Wikipedia. Little did I know, that I read the plot of IT (2017) so I didn't actually get the full story because IT (2017) is only the first segment of the story. IT: Chapter two will be coming out in 2019!
The Characters:
I feel like Bill was the leader. Even though that was never said out loud, it was heavily implied. He was probably my favorite of the Loser's club.
Eddie is a bit like me in the aspect of health issues. While I'm not a hypochondriac, I still could empathize with his mental illness. Every time he stood up for himself, I cheered!
At first, I thought Richie had theatre's because of all the voices he kept spurting out but then I realized that was just part of his personality.
I felt like Stanley was barely there and so I honestly don't have anything to say about him.
Beverly was obsessed over by all the boys. they all had a crush on her which was awkward.
I'm glad Ben was included in spite of his size. It's nice to know that there 's some humanity in the 50's (I say this because the racism and hate was almost too much to bare)
I'm glad that there was a POC character as that's not something I usually see in King's work. I just wish Mike had been more included in the story. I felt like he was always in the background.
The idea of IT is terrifying. I mean a being that appears to you as your worst fear and then kills you?! Eek! I have to admit after seeing a few big chunks of the movie, I was very freaked out. But my biggest concern wasn't being killed; It was that I didn't know what my biggest fear was. And if I didn't know, how would Pennywise kill me? (I know; I'm worrying about how a psycho clown can't kill me. I need help.) Seriously though. All my biggest fears are abstract things. Being alone. Being hated. Fire. Okay, Pennywise could appear to me as fire. Maybe.
The mythology of IT was absolutely crazy. Like, was Stephen King high when he wrote this???
Anyway, if your like me, then you probably had know idea what the **** was going on. And so, I will explain everything. Your welcome.
Explanation of IT (Spoilers ahead... Duh.):
First the basic run down of the plot:
George gets eaten.
Time passes.
Each of the losers club has a interaction with IT.
They band together to discuss IT.
They scare IT away.
TIME PASSES (AGAIN)
The losers club comes back to Derry as adults.
They AGAIN get confronted by IT.
They defeat IT using the Ritual of Chüd. (More on that in a second)
And now: The lore of IT.
IT is an entity from the Macroverse, a universe surrounding ours (the microverse.) IT feeds on people's fear. It turns into a person's fear and then kills him using the dead lights, IT's true form. IT can only be defeated through the Ritual of Chüd, a psychic battle.
I hope that helps. Comment if you have any questions about the lore of IT.
Bottom Line:
5 Stars: Wow.
Age Recommendation: 15+ (Contrary to popular belief, this book isn't THAT scary. Just violent and sexual)
TW: Gore, domestic abuse
Cover: 4/5 ~ Plot: 4/5 ~ Characters: 5/5 ~ Audio: 4/5
Genre: Horror
Publication Date: September 15th, 1986
Publisher: Viking (Penguin Random House)
Standalone: Yes
Best Format: Audio/eBook
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February 12, 2020
"Your hair is winter fire,
January embers
My heart burns there, too."
Evil resides in Derry, Maine. Whether that is in the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, a werewolf or a leper, it pulses through the heart of Derry and has done for many years. IT focuses on a group of children, the Loser's Club, as they try to overcome evil and face their biggest fears in order to do so.
Excuse me while I curl up into a ball and bawl my eyes out... IT was my first King and it really was what got me hooked onto King's writing. I was almost apprehensive at rereading this masterpiece - not just because of its size - but I was afraid that it would tarnish my memories from my first read, I was afraid it wouldn't be as good as I remembered it. However, I can confidently say that it was even better. The Stand is not King's masterpiece, in my opinion, this is.
This book, alongside 11/22/63, the Dark Tower series and Duma Key, is where King's writing abilities truly shine through. IT is simply chockfull of paragraphs and sentences where you need to just stop and pause, and let the awesomeness sink in. You will feel ALL the emotions when reading this book - heartache, fear, joy, sadness... you will laugh, you will cry, you will feel like you ARE a member of the Loser's Club.
Speaking of the Loser's Club, they have to be one of the most well-developed group of characters I've ever encountered, and I think a lot of that lends to the length of this book. We get to spend so much time with each of them individually as well as within the group. People sometimes complain about the length of IT, and perhaps I'm slightly biased, but I love the size and it's probably why you feel kinda lost when you finish - you're so deeply entrenched in this world that leaving again is heartbreaking.
In terms of the themes explored within this book - friendship, childhood, growing up, overcoming your fears - King handles each with such ease. There's a number of similarities between IT and The Body from Different Seasons, it's almost as if The Body was King's practice session for this epic coming-of-age tale. Other themes are also explored within these pages: racism, prejudice, domestic abuse. To anyone who says IT is simply a horror book - you could not be any more wrong (said in the style of Chandler Bing). Yes, horror plays a big part in this book, but as is the case with all of King's books, it's about so much more than that. King's depiction of childhood friendships is something special, it really brings you back to your youth, when everything seemed to be heightened - your first love/crush, the connections and bonds you felt with your friends.
Gahhh, I could talk about this book forever and ever! So I'll finish up by mentioning my favourite aspect of IT. Out of EVERYTHING that happens in this book and all the characters, I have such a soft spot for Ben Hanscom. On my first read, I recall Bill being my favourite, but on my reread, from the very first encounter, I have developed a crazy love for Ben. A reader, who is relentlessly bullied, someone who lived quite a lonely life until he met the Loser's Club... Ben is special to me. Then to see his love for Bev and the haiku he writes for her...MY HEART.
"Ben Hanscom had no sense of being lonely because he had never been anything but."
He's caring and sensitive...a truly good friend. Ben, you the real MVP.
And now I'll shut up. I could probably write a book on my thoughts about IT. One of my favourite books of all time and one of the best books I've ever read... firmly cemented in my top 3 Kings list. 5 stars out of me from me!!
January embers
My heart burns there, too."
Evil resides in Derry, Maine. Whether that is in the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, a werewolf or a leper, it pulses through the heart of Derry and has done for many years. IT focuses on a group of children, the Loser's Club, as they try to overcome evil and face their biggest fears in order to do so.
Excuse me while I curl up into a ball and bawl my eyes out... IT was my first King and it really was what got me hooked onto King's writing. I was almost apprehensive at rereading this masterpiece - not just because of its size - but I was afraid that it would tarnish my memories from my first read, I was afraid it wouldn't be as good as I remembered it. However, I can confidently say that it was even better. The Stand is not King's masterpiece, in my opinion, this is.
This book, alongside 11/22/63, the Dark Tower series and Duma Key, is where King's writing abilities truly shine through. IT is simply chockfull of paragraphs and sentences where you need to just stop and pause, and let the awesomeness sink in. You will feel ALL the emotions when reading this book - heartache, fear, joy, sadness... you will laugh, you will cry, you will feel like you ARE a member of the Loser's Club.
Speaking of the Loser's Club, they have to be one of the most well-developed group of characters I've ever encountered, and I think a lot of that lends to the length of this book. We get to spend so much time with each of them individually as well as within the group. People sometimes complain about the length of IT, and perhaps I'm slightly biased, but I love the size and it's probably why you feel kinda lost when you finish - you're so deeply entrenched in this world that leaving again is heartbreaking.
In terms of the themes explored within this book - friendship, childhood, growing up, overcoming your fears - King handles each with such ease. There's a number of similarities between IT and The Body from Different Seasons, it's almost as if The Body was King's practice session for this epic coming-of-age tale. Other themes are also explored within these pages: racism, prejudice, domestic abuse. To anyone who says IT is simply a horror book - you could not be any more wrong (said in the style of Chandler Bing). Yes, horror plays a big part in this book, but as is the case with all of King's books, it's about so much more than that. King's depiction of childhood friendships is something special, it really brings you back to your youth, when everything seemed to be heightened - your first love/crush, the connections and bonds you felt with your friends.
Gahhh, I could talk about this book forever and ever! So I'll finish up by mentioning my favourite aspect of IT. Out of EVERYTHING that happens in this book and all the characters, I have such a soft spot for Ben Hanscom. On my first read, I recall Bill being my favourite, but on my reread, from the very first encounter, I have developed a crazy love for Ben. A reader, who is relentlessly bullied, someone who lived quite a lonely life until he met the Loser's Club... Ben is special to me. Then to see his love for Bev and the haiku he writes for her...MY HEART.
"Ben Hanscom had no sense of being lonely because he had never been anything but."
He's caring and sensitive...a truly good friend. Ben, you the real MVP.
And now I'll shut up. I could probably write a book on my thoughts about IT. One of my favourite books of all time and one of the best books I've ever read... firmly cemented in my top 3 Kings list. 5 stars out of me from me!!
October 2, 2017
Re-read update - April 2017:
"He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts"
I find it appropriate that I first read this between the ages of 12 and 15 and now I re-read at 39. This is pretty close to the ages of the characters past and present in this book. That was not intentional, but pretty cool!
I didn't remember much more than the basics after all these years, but even with that, my original review below stands.
What I will add is that this book is much more dark, twisted, and disturbing than I remember. Pure evil like puss oozes out from between the words. Stephen King'King's mind - truly scary and Derry - not somewhere I am ever going on vacation!
Original review:
This is one of the essential King reads - it is quite a big one, though!
I once heard that Stephen King felt he shoved so much into it he should have called it "shIT" - (can't remember where I read that and I cannot find the reference at the moment, so maybe this is just a really cool myth)
I read this book years ago - I was in my early teens - so I was not much older than the main characters. Because of that, I think the terror was more real.
I also remember that this book had some of the most terrifying and heart-wrenching scenes I have ever read.
I will say that the one element of it that struck me as odd and that I still scratch my head at today is the . It was a bit uncomfortable and gratuitous.
I may not recommend that you start with this book if you are interested in King. But, if you believe you have reached the point of becoming a King fan and have not read this yet - you really should!
"He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts"
I find it appropriate that I first read this between the ages of 12 and 15 and now I re-read at 39. This is pretty close to the ages of the characters past and present in this book. That was not intentional, but pretty cool!
I didn't remember much more than the basics after all these years, but even with that, my original review below stands.
What I will add is that this book is much more dark, twisted, and disturbing than I remember. Pure evil like puss oozes out from between the words. Stephen King'King's mind - truly scary and Derry - not somewhere I am ever going on vacation!
Original review:
This is one of the essential King reads - it is quite a big one, though!
I once heard that Stephen King felt he shoved so much into it he should have called it "shIT" - (can't remember where I read that and I cannot find the reference at the moment, so maybe this is just a really cool myth)
I read this book years ago - I was in my early teens - so I was not much older than the main characters. Because of that, I think the terror was more real.
I also remember that this book had some of the most terrifying and heart-wrenching scenes I have ever read.
I will say that the one element of it that struck me as odd and that I still scratch my head at today is the . It was a bit uncomfortable and gratuitous.
I may not recommend that you start with this book if you are interested in King. But, if you believe you have reached the point of becoming a King fan and have not read this yet - you really should!
March 2, 2022
Derry, Maine seems like any other small town in the US except for its dark history. Death and disappearances are the norm and every 27 years they peak as more and more children are killed. When Bill's brother Georgie is killed by It, the mysterious thing behind Derry's darkness, Bill sets out to find it. Bill becomes part of a group of other children, all who have had run ins with It and together they get rid of It. They swear an oath to return to Derry if It ever comes back and starts killing and 27 years later they all return to face down It and try to get rid of It once and for all. Don't read past this point because I can't promise anything about no spoilers.
I finally finished this god damn tome of a book, and I really wish I weren't so compulsive and obsessive about finishing every book I start because wow that was 1400 pages and I couldn't get into the story at all. Also I have a few questions and I feel like I may have missed something so if someone could answer these questions I would appreciate it and maybe then I might feel better about the book. First off it's mentioned that none of gang have children and it's alluded to as being part of what happened the first time with It but I didn't understand what that had to do with anything? Was there an actual explanation to this or was it just supposed to be there to be ~creepy~. Second why did they have to go out of their way to find It and get rid of it that first time, if It has cycles of 27 years wouldn't It eventually just have stopped on its own anyways because there's no way someone banished it every time it appeared because they're supposedly the only ones to have done so. Lastly what was the point of them having sex in the sewer, I'm not a prude but having 12 year olds do it in the sewer should have a better explanation than to bring them all together and bond them. I don't see how they had to do at all did he just put that in there to be outrageous because good job it worked.
At times I did enjoy the book but it was just really long with so many characters and details and a lot of the time I felt myself getting bored like I didn't need such exact descriptions of the boat flowing down the sewer and the way it kept cutting back and forth especially towards the end between past and present just felt choppy and maybe that was the point but it just made me not get really into the book. When I read horror I have to lose some self awareness and get pulled in so I can be creeped out but the whole time I was too aware that I was reading a book and I just kept feeling like it wasn't scary at all. Especially with It morphing constantly like werewolves don't freak me out so I was just like wow a werewolf thats cool I guess.
I do like Stephen King and he writes very well but this one just did not work for me and I guess I just missed something because everyone else seems to have really enjoyed this book.
I finally finished this god damn tome of a book, and I really wish I weren't so compulsive and obsessive about finishing every book I start because wow that was 1400 pages and I couldn't get into the story at all. Also I have a few questions and I feel like I may have missed something so if someone could answer these questions I would appreciate it and maybe then I might feel better about the book. First off it's mentioned that none of gang have children and it's alluded to as being part of what happened the first time with It but I didn't understand what that had to do with anything? Was there an actual explanation to this or was it just supposed to be there to be ~creepy~. Second why did they have to go out of their way to find It and get rid of it that first time, if It has cycles of 27 years wouldn't It eventually just have stopped on its own anyways because there's no way someone banished it every time it appeared because they're supposedly the only ones to have done so. Lastly what was the point of them having sex in the sewer, I'm not a prude but having 12 year olds do it in the sewer should have a better explanation than to bring them all together and bond them. I don't see how they had to do at all did he just put that in there to be outrageous because good job it worked.
At times I did enjoy the book but it was just really long with so many characters and details and a lot of the time I felt myself getting bored like I didn't need such exact descriptions of the boat flowing down the sewer and the way it kept cutting back and forth especially towards the end between past and present just felt choppy and maybe that was the point but it just made me not get really into the book. When I read horror I have to lose some self awareness and get pulled in so I can be creeped out but the whole time I was too aware that I was reading a book and I just kept feeling like it wasn't scary at all. Especially with It morphing constantly like werewolves don't freak me out so I was just like wow a werewolf thats cool I guess.
I do like Stephen King and he writes very well but this one just did not work for me and I guess I just missed something because everyone else seems to have really enjoyed this book.
January 9, 2022
God. This book.
I can't believe I've never reviewed IT.
Ok, I read this back in high school with my best friend, and it scared the shit out of both of us. I still have a small scar on my leg from when we thought we saw Pennywise's likeness burned into the side of her dad's old farmhouse, and we both took off running through what was in all likelihood, a condemned building.
She was faster, I was clumsier.
I plowed into an old nail that was sticking out of the wall and ripped a hole in my leg in an effort to escape the killer clown.
No, I did not get a tetanus shot. This was back in the good old days, so we just poured some hydrogen peroxide on it and called it a day.
We were (for several minutes, at least) convinced that we barely made it out of there alive.
Cut us some slack! We were idiotic teenage girls and my incoherent squealing that Pennywise had slashed my leg with his claws was feeding the hysteria of the moment.
And thanks to that scar, 20 plus years later this book still haunts my ass. Or maybe I would have been terrified of clowns anyway. But seriously, there's still a scene from that book that gives me goosebumps.
Remember when that old woman turns into a monster? But it happens so fucking slowly at first that you almost don't notice it?
Like, first her teeth just seem a bit more yellow, then by the end of the scene...
OMFG! *screams, dives under the bed*
Alright, as much as I loved the chills this story gave me, it also marked the end of my Stephen King reading spree. And here's why:
Fuck that noise, Mr. King. It was gross and unnecessary. And even as a teenager, I knew it. I'm not sure if it's a fair thing or not, but I've not really been able to get back into his books since then.
I can't believe I've never reviewed IT.
Ok, I read this back in high school with my best friend, and it scared the shit out of both of us. I still have a small scar on my leg from when we thought we saw Pennywise's likeness burned into the side of her dad's old farmhouse, and we both took off running through what was in all likelihood, a condemned building.
She was faster, I was clumsier.
I plowed into an old nail that was sticking out of the wall and ripped a hole in my leg in an effort to escape the killer clown.
No, I did not get a tetanus shot. This was back in the good old days, so we just poured some hydrogen peroxide on it and called it a day.
We were (for several minutes, at least) convinced that we barely made it out of there alive.
Cut us some slack! We were idiotic teenage girls and my incoherent squealing that Pennywise had slashed my leg with his claws was feeding the hysteria of the moment.
And thanks to that scar, 20 plus years later this book still haunts my ass. Or maybe I would have been terrified of clowns anyway. But seriously, there's still a scene from that book that gives me goosebumps.
Remember when that old woman turns into a monster? But it happens so fucking slowly at first that you almost don't notice it?
Like, first her teeth just seem a bit more yellow, then by the end of the scene...
OMFG! *screams, dives under the bed*
Alright, as much as I loved the chills this story gave me, it also marked the end of my Stephen King reading spree. And here's why:
Fuck that noise, Mr. King. It was gross and unnecessary. And even as a teenager, I knew it. I'm not sure if it's a fair thing or not, but I've not really been able to get back into his books since then.
September 13, 2019
★★★★★ /5
This was a ride!
This is a huge book, but if you consider to read it, it is definitely worth your time.
Of course, it is very well written with a lot of description, which was sometimes hard to go through, but it didn’t ruin the experience. The story itself is layered and complex and everything happens for a reason and that is very important for a book like this to have that. It is definitely an interesting and captivating story.
Two stories (timelines) compliment each other and it isn’t hard to follow them at the same time. The characters are fleshed out and you can get a good grasp of their motivations and why they are in one way or another.
At first, I personally thought that this book will be a little bit different, but actual content didn’t disappoint. Stephen King is king of horror for a reason.
This was a ride!
This is a huge book, but if you consider to read it, it is definitely worth your time.
Of course, it is very well written with a lot of description, which was sometimes hard to go through, but it didn’t ruin the experience. The story itself is layered and complex and everything happens for a reason and that is very important for a book like this to have that. It is definitely an interesting and captivating story.
Two stories (timelines) compliment each other and it isn’t hard to follow them at the same time. The characters are fleshed out and you can get a good grasp of their motivations and why they are in one way or another.
At first, I personally thought that this book will be a little bit different, but actual content didn’t disappoint. Stephen King is king of horror for a reason.
May 4, 2024
This terrifying classic has officially entered my Top 5 King list!!! I'm so happy that I finally faced my fears and read It!
This book is amazing. It took me just under a month to read, but it was absolutely worth it. I'm so in love with this.
That's it. That's my full review. I will read it again someday and maybe I will be able to leave further thoughts at that time.
Right now, my mind is blown and my heart is happy!
Original:
I have avoided this book my entire life. Not because it is over 1,000-pages. I have no problem with that. I've read The Stand three times.
The fact is, I am petrified of clowns; have been my whole life. My parents couldn't take me anywhere there could possibly be a clown sighting. No circus, no parades. Even if they popped up on television, I would have to leave the room. It's a whole thing.
This carried over into my adult life for the most part, however, I feel like I am ready to give it a go. With the help of my friend, Shannon and the power of the buddy read, I am finally tackling this beast!
This book is amazing. It took me just under a month to read, but it was absolutely worth it. I'm so in love with this.
That's it. That's my full review. I will read it again someday and maybe I will be able to leave further thoughts at that time.
Right now, my mind is blown and my heart is happy!
Original:
I have avoided this book my entire life. Not because it is over 1,000-pages. I have no problem with that. I've read The Stand three times.
The fact is, I am petrified of clowns; have been my whole life. My parents couldn't take me anywhere there could possibly be a clown sighting. No circus, no parades. Even if they popped up on television, I would have to leave the room. It's a whole thing.
This carried over into my adult life for the most part, however, I feel like I am ready to give it a go. With the help of my friend, Shannon and the power of the buddy read, I am finally tackling this beast!
September 12, 2017
You can't be clowning about IT!!!
THOSE TERRIFYING CLOWNS
It was easier to be brave when you were someone else.
It's kinda..."funny" how such characters, the clowns, that they are supposed to make us laugh, and not matter that, you can find just too much examples of "evil clowns", many from fantasy but even at least one from horrific reality, that you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley...or any place at all!!!
The Joker, Stitches, Homie from The Simpsons, Punchinello from Dean Koontz's Life Expectancy, The alien clowns from Killer Klowns from Outer Space movie, Doctor Who's Robot Clowns, Spawn's Violator, Rob Zombie's Captain Spaulding, Fucko from the Scary or Die film, The Clown Doll from the Amusement film, also the quite recently Twisty from the Fourth Season of American Horror Story, and even, from real life, the serial killer John Wayne Gacy aka The Killer Clown.
Even, while not terrifying, but indeed quite annoying, there is Binky from Garfield cartoons.
And those are only the examples that came easier to my mind and that I watched or read about at some point.
So, why society is so inclined to accept and being really scared of a kind of character that was supposed to make us laugh? Of course, if they are chasing us with butcher knives, that helps to input the scary factor, but be honest, even in the first moment that you watch them, before they would do anything nasty, you are already scared with them. They look terrifying!
Just like the one that it's breathing behind you right now...
THE POWER OF LIES
We lie best when we lie to ourselves.
Sorry for the lie on the last line of the previous section. But it was just to introduce the most powerful element of this novel...
...the lies.
I think that Stephen King, showed us how powerful can be the lies.
The Losers Club were lying themselves pretending that nothing unusual happened on their childhoods. Even some of them were keep lying to themselves that their adult lives were okay. Lying in such powerful way that their memories are fractured.
The adult people of the town of Derry were lying themselves too about the sexual preferences of some of their fellow neighbours.
The town's Police officers are lying on their reports.
Some moms were lying that their children had some illness.
Pennywise is lying about ITs own real appearance to everybody.
Lies, lies, lies!
Some of us prefer to lie ourselves than facing our lives.
The temptation of lying and creating false "realities" instead of dealing with the harsh truths.
Lying ourselves instead of facing the real monsters in our lives.
Even sometimes, lying ourselves that we haven't any other option than to deal with the monsters alone...
...when there are people around us willing to help us, if we just tell the truth.
But telling the truth about our problems, many times is even scarier than the lies.
All of us float...
...between lies and truths.
THOSE TERRIFYING CLOWNS
It was easier to be brave when you were someone else.
It's kinda..."funny" how such characters, the clowns, that they are supposed to make us laugh, and not matter that, you can find just too much examples of "evil clowns", many from fantasy but even at least one from horrific reality, that you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley...or any place at all!!!
The Joker, Stitches, Homie from The Simpsons, Punchinello from Dean Koontz's Life Expectancy, The alien clowns from Killer Klowns from Outer Space movie, Doctor Who's Robot Clowns, Spawn's Violator, Rob Zombie's Captain Spaulding, Fucko from the Scary or Die film, The Clown Doll from the Amusement film, also the quite recently Twisty from the Fourth Season of American Horror Story, and even, from real life, the serial killer John Wayne Gacy aka The Killer Clown.
Even, while not terrifying, but indeed quite annoying, there is Binky from Garfield cartoons.
And those are only the examples that came easier to my mind and that I watched or read about at some point.
So, why society is so inclined to accept and being really scared of a kind of character that was supposed to make us laugh? Of course, if they are chasing us with butcher knives, that helps to input the scary factor, but be honest, even in the first moment that you watch them, before they would do anything nasty, you are already scared with them. They look terrifying!
Just like the one that it's breathing behind you right now...
THE POWER OF LIES
We lie best when we lie to ourselves.
Sorry for the lie on the last line of the previous section. But it was just to introduce the most powerful element of this novel...
...the lies.
I think that Stephen King, showed us how powerful can be the lies.
The Losers Club were lying themselves pretending that nothing unusual happened on their childhoods. Even some of them were keep lying to themselves that their adult lives were okay. Lying in such powerful way that their memories are fractured.
The adult people of the town of Derry were lying themselves too about the sexual preferences of some of their fellow neighbours.
The town's Police officers are lying on their reports.
Some moms were lying that their children had some illness.
Pennywise is lying about ITs own real appearance to everybody.
Lies, lies, lies!
Some of us prefer to lie ourselves than facing our lives.
The temptation of lying and creating false "realities" instead of dealing with the harsh truths.
Lying ourselves instead of facing the real monsters in our lives.
Even sometimes, lying ourselves that we haven't any other option than to deal with the monsters alone...
...when there are people around us willing to help us, if we just tell the truth.
But telling the truth about our problems, many times is even scarier than the lies.
All of us float...
...between lies and truths.
May 27, 2024
English (It) / Italiano
«The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain»
It is an horror novel. The bowels of Derry, Maine, cyclically regurgitate every 27 years a dark and abject entity, infecting the city with hate, feeding on the fear of people (or directly some people flesh-and-blood).
It is an adventure novel. Seven clumsy kids band together after a tragedy. They have in common a pretty unhappy life. "The Losers Club" borns that way, and this is their story. Stephen King already did a practice run with The Body, but this time he tops himself.
It is a drama novel. The lost youth of a handful of a bunch of 12- year-olds, forced to give up their innocence to make room to a still-green sense of right and duty. The renewed fears of grownups not completely grow up, plunging down once again to the depths of despair.
And yet: It is a novel about friendship and solidarity, It is a novel about violence with violent stories of bullying and alcoholism, It is novel about redemption. It is a fantasy novel, a gothic novel, a coming-of-age story. It is a novel with a first-class style of writing, never boring. It is a novel that should be read two times, once as a kid and again as an adult, wearing the protagonist's skin as role-playing, and luckily I did. And after two readings, surely followed by a third one in the future, I can only express my thanks, as a reader, for the opportunity to read this wonder.
Evil just keeps on coming, it always does. The important thing is Good is ready each time to greet it properly. Kicking its arse.
Vote: 10
«Il terrore che sarebbe durato per ventotto anni, ma forse anche di più, ebbe inizio, per quel che mi è dato sapere e narrare, con una barchetta di carta di giornale che scendeva lungo un marciapiede in un rivolo gonfio di pioggia»
Romanzo dell'orrore, questo It. Le viscere di Derry, nel Maine, rigurgitano ciclicamente ogni 27 anni un'entità nera e abietta che infetta d'odio il luogo che ha scelto a propria dimora, cibandosi delle paure degli abitanti (oltre che di qualche abitante stesso in carne ed ossa).
Romanzo d'avventura, questo It. Sette ragazzini un po' imbranati fanno gruppo in seguito ad una tragedia. Hanno in comune una vita piuttosto infelice. Nasce così il "Club dei Perdenti", e questa è la loro storia. Le prove generali Stephen King le aveva fatte con "Il Corpo" (The Body), ma qui si supera.
Romanzo drammatico questo It. La perduta giovinezza di un pugno di dodicenni, costretti ad abbandonare la spensieratezza per far posto ad un ancora acerbo senso del dovere e del giusto. Le paure rinnovate di adulti mai cresciuti fino in fondo, che si trovano di nuovo a sprofondare nell'abisso della disperazione.
E ancora: romanzo dell'amicizia e della solidarietà, romanzo violento con storie violente di bullismo e alcolismo, romanzo del riscatto. Romanzo fantasy, romanzo gotico, romanzo di formazione. Romanzo dalla scrittura sopraffina, che non ti annoia mai. Romanzo che andrebbe letto due volte, sia da ragazzi che da adulti, per calarsi nei panni dei personaggi come un gioco di ruolo ed apprezzarlo all'inverosimile, ed io per fortuna l'ho fatto. E dopo due letture, alle quali farà sicuramente seguito una terza, posso solo ringraziare, in qualità di lettore, di avere avuto la possibilità di leggere questo prodigio.Prima o poi il male ritorna, lo fa sempre. L'importante è che ci sia il bene ad accoglierlo come si conviene. A calci in culo.
Voto: 10
April 8, 2016
Let me take you all on a tour, kids. We’re going to everyone’s favorite place- Derry, Maine! We’re going to do some sight-seeing while I talk about the book that is my absolute hands-down #1 book of ALL TIME. And no, it is NOT Harry Potter! Shocking, I know! (That always surprises people.) Anyway, my name is
We’re going to go where it all begins- the most infamous storm drain in all the lands. This is the storm drain where Pennywise offers little Georgie a balloon. “We all float down here, Georgie.” But trust me, kiddos, you don’t want to float.
Our next stops will show you a few of the major landmarks in Derry. Ben Hanscomb, literary boyfriend #2, spent a good amount of his childhood at the library. Pennywise is also fond of that library.
Next we will visit the Paul Bunyan statue. That tool in his hand is a good indicator that this is in Maine. It is the ONLY Paul Bunyan statue in the country where he is holding that tool. It was created in Maine and that is why he is displaying it here.(And no, I don't know what it's called, just that it is used to pick up and move logs.) Richie was resting on a bench after being chased by Henry Bowers and Co when he is “awoken” by this statue coming to life. Paul proceeds to chase Richie down the streets of Derry while swinging his ax! Was Richie dreaming or did it really happen?
The Kissing Bridge where poor Adrian Mellon was thrown off for being a homosexual can be spotted in downtown Derry. The sad reality of this is that a teenage boy who was openly homosexual was actually thrown off of this canal in Bangor. The boy would have survived with only broken legs had the degenerates who threw him over gone down and turned him over. He was asthmatic and landed face down in mere inches of water. It was enough to seal his fate. He died and inspired two separate aspects of this story.
Now we’ll stop by Bev’s house and see if she wants to go down to the Barrens with us. Hopefully she doesn’t have any more blood pouring out of her bathroom sink. Lord knows I don’t want to clean anymore of that up! Bev’s house is mentioned several times throughout the book and her status as “poor” is emphasized. This house, which is multiple apartments, is exactly how I had envisioned it. And no joke, there was a shady-looking-drug-dealer- type who came out of nowhere to add to the overall effect! Yikes!
Moving right along, now!
We’ll head on down to the Barrens now and see if we can catch up with the gang! Oh! I see Silver propped up against the same tree. Stuttering Bill, Eddie, Mike, Richie, Stan and Ben must be down here. We’ll drop Bevvie off and take a few pictures before moving on.
Ah, the Barrens. When visiting them in April instead of high Summer, one will find a raging rapid resembling a river. But be not fooled my friends! For in the summer the water is almost nonexistent; it is a trickle if you’re lucky.
When the Losers hang out down here there is some water, but not anything such as this. But, you can still see the allure of a place like this for kids. It is still a very popular hangout for them to this day.The place where the Losers enter into Pennywise’s lair can be seen in the bottom right hand picture. That is the exact spot King had in mind. *shudders*
Our last stop is one of the most breath-taking spots. It is the highest point in all of
I was overwhelmed when I sat there. Truly.
When I try to articulate what it is this book means to me I find myself incapable of speech. I get frustrated with trying to explain so much at once; at trying to narrow down the vast meaning in this book. I get very upset when people refer to it as “the one with the serial killer clown”. It is so much more than that. And I mean that both ways- IT is more than just a clown in the book and IT the book is so much more than a book about a clown.
It is about belief. The belief that your friends will be by your side through the worst part of your life. The belief* that they will share in the great times as well. The belief that magic is real and it is real because you believe it to be. It is about the belief you have in yourself that you are strong and capable of conquering anything that stands in your way.
IT is about love, friendship and empowerment. All the proof of that I need is in the Apocalyptic Rock Fight. It’s about standing up to those who try to beat you down- whether physically, mentally or spiritually. It is about taking control of your life and your destiny. It’s about accepting responsibility even when you don’t want to.
I love this book as it has become a part of me. It’s ingrained in me; a part of my very soul. Whenever I revisit it I am surprised to find I am crying at a different part. This time,. That just broke my heart.
I don’t recommend IT for everyone or just anyone. IT is one of my “special reserve recommendations” that get handed out to those I trust with it. I can’t bear to think someone could read this book and not see what I see or feel what I feel.** It hurts my heart too much to think of that. But, know if I have recommended it or suggested it to you that I believe you to be of a strong character; a fellow Loser.
I do hope you have all enjoyed my tour. I suppose I should let you get back home now. If you’re walking- look out for those drains! Sweet dreams tonight, kids. It’s been fun!
*Thanks, Delee! ;)
**For all of the potential trolls- I know AND understand that people have varying opinions on books. I get it. I just mean that this book means too much to me to go handing it out willy-nilly to people who are going to read it without understanding it or even trying to. /rant
***pad not pen
April 29, 2020
with a deep sigh, she closes the book and steals a glance at the clock. its barely 10pm and she knows its already beginning.
she can feel it in the way her body tenses at every noise that threatens the peaceful quiet. its in the way her heart skips a beat at every floating movement she swears she sees, just beyond her periphery. its the onset of fear.
how silly she is for reading a horror book at such an hour! ‘you knew this would happen, with your overactive imagination,’ she scolds herself.
her only consolation is by already being tucked into the comforting warmth of her bed.
she melts further beneath the covers, wondering how long its physically possible for a person to go without sleep. for in sleep, the fears become real. for in sleep, nightmares thrive.
so she lays there, too terrified to close her eyes.
she becomes acutely aware of every shift in the darkness, the shadows dancing in delight across the walls. and shes convinced they begin to merge into the shape of a clown…
her phone pings suddenly. in the silence of the night, the sound is as harsh as a balloon popping beside her.
she flinches. she gasps.
in the distance, sirens.
she resigns herself for a long night.
↠ 3.5 stars
she can feel it in the way her body tenses at every noise that threatens the peaceful quiet. its in the way her heart skips a beat at every floating movement she swears she sees, just beyond her periphery. its the onset of fear.
how silly she is for reading a horror book at such an hour! ‘you knew this would happen, with your overactive imagination,’ she scolds herself.
her only consolation is by already being tucked into the comforting warmth of her bed.
she melts further beneath the covers, wondering how long its physically possible for a person to go without sleep. for in sleep, the fears become real. for in sleep, nightmares thrive.
so she lays there, too terrified to close her eyes.
she becomes acutely aware of every shift in the darkness, the shadows dancing in delight across the walls. and shes convinced they begin to merge into the shape of a clown…
her phone pings suddenly. in the silence of the night, the sound is as harsh as a balloon popping beside her.
she flinches. she gasps.
in the distance, sirens.
she resigns herself for a long night.
↠ 3.5 stars
Read
April 25, 2021“Maybe there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely.”
1200 pages are long. Or more like: looooong. So long that I expected more from it. Especially because Stephen King wrote it. I believe that this book would have been a lot better if you had cut out 200 pages or more. Let me tell you why:
The story set up is what basically makes this novel so long. The real deal only happens on the last 200 pages. So you are basically sitting, reading, waiting for it to start and it won't happen until you've read 1000 pages. After a while, you'll have figured out the scheme of this book. 7 kids fighting It, seven main characters of greater and lesser importance and a few side characters with a story of their own. Nearly every part of this book - there are five - follows the same pattern. Someone experienced some horror event related to It and tells their story. Bill goes first, followed by Richie, followed by Ben, Eddie, Bev, Mark, Stan and whoever else is part of this big story. This applies to almost every part of the book and I caught myself thinking "Please, not another one. I got it."
It also doesn't do any good for the suspense. Try to build it up over 1000 pages so it reaches its peak in the big finale. It won't work, because the plot is torn apart again and again. The only time it got me hooked, the only time I got goosebumps and had to put on some music so I wouldn't get too caught up in the book was during the first 200 pages. I repeat: The first 200 pages - in a horror book that lasts 1000 pages more. After a while, the events kept repeating themselves and couldn't surprise or captivate me any longer.
The characters were great and I loved these kids. Henry, however, really got on my nerves. He is the typical bully, the mean big guy. I thought he would be a minor side character but gosh, we couldn't get rid of him and this tired me out, too.
I also really liked Audra and adding her to the events in Derry made sense, but adding Tom did not. He was a loose end, and I felt like his story didn't go anywhere. What was the point?
What really weirded me out was what Beverly and her boys did after they fought It for the first time. On one hand, I get what Stephen King was trying to do, on the other I don't think it was essential to the story, or at least not in that way. It was gross, it was inappropriate and it didn't tie into it all. There was no earlier reference to what was going to happen. Additionally, it's unrealistic and doesn't even prove a point. That is where, in my opinion, King really got something wrong.
Now I'm not saying this book was boring. I don't think it was. It was intriguing and I especially enjoyed the Interludes, but even the last Interlude was simply less captivating than the others. Again: the same old pattern.
I'm glad I read this and proud of myself that I finished it. I'm really looking forward to the movie adaption and I feel like - unpopular opinion alert - it could be better than the book. I'll probably be more emotional and involved when I see it on screen. That is if they stay close to the book and don't fuck it up.
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1200 pages are long. Or more like: looooong. So long that I expected more from it. Especially because Stephen King wrote it. I believe that this book would have been a lot better if you had cut out 200 pages or more. Let me tell you why:
The story set up is what basically makes this novel so long. The real deal only happens on the last 200 pages. So you are basically sitting, reading, waiting for it to start and it won't happen until you've read 1000 pages. After a while, you'll have figured out the scheme of this book. 7 kids fighting It, seven main characters of greater and lesser importance and a few side characters with a story of their own. Nearly every part of this book - there are five - follows the same pattern. Someone experienced some horror event related to It and tells their story. Bill goes first, followed by Richie, followed by Ben, Eddie, Bev, Mark, Stan and whoever else is part of this big story. This applies to almost every part of the book and I caught myself thinking "Please, not another one. I got it."
It also doesn't do any good for the suspense. Try to build it up over 1000 pages so it reaches its peak in the big finale. It won't work, because the plot is torn apart again and again. The only time it got me hooked, the only time I got goosebumps and had to put on some music so I wouldn't get too caught up in the book was during the first 200 pages. I repeat: The first 200 pages - in a horror book that lasts 1000 pages more. After a while, the events kept repeating themselves and couldn't surprise or captivate me any longer.
The characters were great and I loved these kids. Henry, however, really got on my nerves. He is the typical bully, the mean big guy. I thought he would be a minor side character but gosh, we couldn't get rid of him and this tired me out, too.
I also really liked Audra and adding her to the events in Derry made sense, but adding Tom did not. He was a loose end, and I felt like his story didn't go anywhere. What was the point?
What really weirded me out was what Beverly and her boys did after they fought It for the first time. On one hand, I get what Stephen King was trying to do, on the other I don't think it was essential to the story, or at least not in that way. It was gross, it was inappropriate and it didn't tie into it all. There was no earlier reference to what was going to happen. Additionally, it's unrealistic and doesn't even prove a point. That is where, in my opinion, King really got something wrong.
Now I'm not saying this book was boring. I don't think it was. It was intriguing and I especially enjoyed the Interludes, but even the last Interlude was simply less captivating than the others. Again: the same old pattern.
I'm glad I read this and proud of myself that I finished it. I'm really looking forward to the movie adaption and I feel like - unpopular opinion alert - it could be better than the book. I'll probably be more emotional and involved when I see it on screen. That is if they stay close to the book and don't fuck it up.
Find more of my books on Instagram
March 19, 2024
I have a new BookTube channel! Come find me at Hello, Bookworm📚🐛
Click here to watch a video review of this book on my (old) channel, From Beginning to Bookend.
It is 1958 in the small town of Derry, Maine and several children have been found murdered. Bill Denbrough and his six best friends believe the murders are linked to something that lurks beneath their home town – something that crawled from their nightmares and has taken form in the shadowed recesses of the sewers. Driven by forces unseen, Bill and his friends sense they have what it takes to stop the monster. They vow – with a piece of broken glass sliced across their palms – to come back to Derry if evil ever returns. Twenty-seven years later, the murders have started again. It’s time for Bill and his friends to honor their vow . . .
Here in Derry children disappear unexplained and unfound at the rate of forty to sixty a year. Most are teenagers. They are assumed to be runaways. I suppose some of them even are.
At over eleven hundred pages in length, It is a prolific book that provides significant backstory for each character and gives an abundant history of Derry, Maine. Because King provides so many specifics – almost to the point of excess – the book reads like a vast compilation of research collected on true events.
Though the story is sometimes bogged down by the excessive specifics, quite often a slogging passage (that recounts a historical event) eventually arrives at such a disturbing conclusion that forging through a long, slow chapter becomes, with startling suddenness, a worthwhile read.
What makes this book notorious, however, is the dreadful monster at the heart of the story: Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise – or It – is not as prevalent in the book as one might presume, given its classification as a horror novel, but any time It makes an appearance, the narrative drops readers into a dark scene where terrifying events unfold.
Smells of dirt and wet and long-gone vegetables would merge into one unmistakable ineluctable smell, the smell of the monster, the apotheosis of all monsters. It was the smell of something for which he had no name: the smell of It, crouched and lurking and ready to spring. A creature which would eat anything but which was especially hungry for boymeat.
Though it contains elements of horror, It is a literary coming of age story that just happens to take place in a small town were horrific events transpire. Instead of dividing the book into two parts, with the events of 1958 recounted first and the events of 1985 recounted second, King opts to tell both stories simultaneously with the use of clever plot pacing and an unorthodox chapter structure. This sometimes results in the narrative feeling redundant, but the story is so skillfully woven together that one cannot help but appreciate King’s masterful stylistic approach to conveying two stories at once.
With characters that feel like old friends and enough scares to keep readers up at night, It strikes a satisfying balance between literary writing and telling grim stories of violence and gore.
Click here to watch a video review of this book on my (old) channel, From Beginning to Bookend.
It is 1958 in the small town of Derry, Maine and several children have been found murdered. Bill Denbrough and his six best friends believe the murders are linked to something that lurks beneath their home town – something that crawled from their nightmares and has taken form in the shadowed recesses of the sewers. Driven by forces unseen, Bill and his friends sense they have what it takes to stop the monster. They vow – with a piece of broken glass sliced across their palms – to come back to Derry if evil ever returns. Twenty-seven years later, the murders have started again. It’s time for Bill and his friends to honor their vow . . .
Here in Derry children disappear unexplained and unfound at the rate of forty to sixty a year. Most are teenagers. They are assumed to be runaways. I suppose some of them even are.
At over eleven hundred pages in length, It is a prolific book that provides significant backstory for each character and gives an abundant history of Derry, Maine. Because King provides so many specifics – almost to the point of excess – the book reads like a vast compilation of research collected on true events.
Though the story is sometimes bogged down by the excessive specifics, quite often a slogging passage (that recounts a historical event) eventually arrives at such a disturbing conclusion that forging through a long, slow chapter becomes, with startling suddenness, a worthwhile read.
What makes this book notorious, however, is the dreadful monster at the heart of the story: Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Pennywise – or It – is not as prevalent in the book as one might presume, given its classification as a horror novel, but any time It makes an appearance, the narrative drops readers into a dark scene where terrifying events unfold.
Smells of dirt and wet and long-gone vegetables would merge into one unmistakable ineluctable smell, the smell of the monster, the apotheosis of all monsters. It was the smell of something for which he had no name: the smell of It, crouched and lurking and ready to spring. A creature which would eat anything but which was especially hungry for boymeat.
Though it contains elements of horror, It is a literary coming of age story that just happens to take place in a small town were horrific events transpire. Instead of dividing the book into two parts, with the events of 1958 recounted first and the events of 1985 recounted second, King opts to tell both stories simultaneously with the use of clever plot pacing and an unorthodox chapter structure. This sometimes results in the narrative feeling redundant, but the story is so skillfully woven together that one cannot help but appreciate King’s masterful stylistic approach to conveying two stories at once.
With characters that feel like old friends and enough scares to keep readers up at night, It strikes a satisfying balance between literary writing and telling grim stories of violence and gore.
October 17, 2021
It, Stephen King
It is a 1986 horror novel, by American author Stephen King.
It was his 22nd book, and his 18th novel written under his own name.
The story follows the exploits of seven children as they are terrorized by an eponymous being, which exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It" primarily appears in the form of a clown in order to attract its preferred prey of young children.
The novel is told through narratives alternating between two time periods, and is largely told in the third-person omniscient mode. It deals with themes which would eventually become King staples: the power of memory, childhood trauma, and its recurrent echoes in adulthood and overcoming evil through mutual trust and sacrifice.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهاردهم ماه دسامبر سال 2017میلادی
عنوان: آن؛ نویسنده: استیون کینگ؛ مترجم مهرداد سبیانی؛ مشهد سیمرغ خراسان، سال1396؛ در1000ص؛ شابک9786008014805؛ موضوع داستانهای ترسناک از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
کتاب «آن» از ژانر وحشت، به قلم «استیون کینگ» است، که نخستین بار در سال 1986میلادی منتشر شد؛ رمان، روایت غیرخطی دارد، و از زبان سوم شخص، نگاشته شده است؛ داستان کتاب، در دو برهه ی زمانی؛ یعنی اواخر دهه پنجاه سده ی بیستم میلادی، و اواسط دهه هشتاد سده بیستم میلادی، در شهر «دری»، واقع در ایالت «مین، آمریکا»، رخ میدهد؛ خط اصلی داستان، درباره ی گروهی از بچه ها، مشهور به «باشگاه بازندگان» است، که با موجود عجیبی، با نام «پنی وایز»، روبرو شده اند، که تواناییهایی، همچون «دگرپیکری» دارد؛ «پنی وایز»، بیشتر خود را، به شکل یک «دلقک»، به بچه ها نشان میدهد، و با تغذیه کردن از ترس آنها، به زندگی خویش ادامه میدهد؛ این کتاب از مشهورترین و پرفروشترین کتابهای «استیون کینگ» است؛ تا کنون دو اقتباس، از روی این کتاب به سرانجام رسیده است؛ نخست یک «مینی سریال»، در سال1990میلادی ساخته شده، که با واکنشهای ضد و نقیضی مواجه شد، و سپس، در سال2017میلادی، فیلم بلند سینمایی به کارگردانی «اندی موشیاتی»، با عنوان «آن، قسمت نخست» بر اساس همین رمان ساخته شده، که توانسته به پرفروشترین فیلم ترسناک تاریخ تبدیل شود؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 06/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 24/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
It is a 1986 horror novel, by American author Stephen King.
It was his 22nd book, and his 18th novel written under his own name.
The story follows the exploits of seven children as they are terrorized by an eponymous being, which exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It" primarily appears in the form of a clown in order to attract its preferred prey of young children.
The novel is told through narratives alternating between two time periods, and is largely told in the third-person omniscient mode. It deals with themes which would eventually become King staples: the power of memory, childhood trauma, and its recurrent echoes in adulthood and overcoming evil through mutual trust and sacrifice.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز چهاردهم ماه دسامبر سال 2017میلادی
عنوان: آن؛ نویسنده: استیون کینگ؛ مترجم مهرداد سبیانی؛ مشهد سیمرغ خراسان، سال1396؛ در1000ص؛ شابک9786008014805؛ موضوع داستانهای ترسناک از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
کتاب «آن» از ژانر وحشت، به قلم «استیون کینگ» است، که نخستین بار در سال 1986میلادی منتشر شد؛ رمان، روایت غیرخطی دارد، و از زبان سوم شخص، نگاشته شده است؛ داستان کتاب، در دو برهه ی زمانی؛ یعنی اواخر دهه پنجاه سده ی بیستم میلادی، و اواسط دهه هشتاد سده بیستم میلادی، در شهر «دری»، واقع در ایالت «مین، آمریکا»، رخ میدهد؛ خط اصلی داستان، درباره ی گروهی از بچه ها، مشهور به «باشگاه بازندگان» است، که با موجود عجیبی، با نام «پنی وایز»، روبرو شده اند، که تواناییهایی، همچون «دگرپیکری» دارد؛ «پنی وایز»، بیشتر خود را، به شکل یک «دلقک»، به بچه ها نشان میدهد، و با تغذیه کردن از ترس آنها، به زندگی خویش ادامه میدهد؛ این کتاب از مشهورترین و پرفروشترین کتابهای «استیون کینگ» است؛ تا کنون دو اقتباس، از روی این کتاب به سرانجام رسیده است؛ نخست یک «مینی سریال»، در سال1990میلادی ساخته شده، که با واکنشهای ضد و نقیضی مواجه شد، و سپس، در سال2017میلادی، فیلم بلند سینمایی به کارگردانی «اندی موشیاتی»، با عنوان «آن، قسمت نخست» بر اساس همین رمان ساخته شده، که توانسته به پرفروشترین فیلم ترسناک تاریخ تبدیل شود؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 06/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 24/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
September 14, 2017
Only Stephen King could write an eleven hundred page book about the innocence and wonder of childhood, and then kick it off with a six-year-old boy getting his arm ripped off by a clown.
Derry, Maine, in 1958 is a bad place to be if you’re a kid. Child disappearances and murders are occurring with astonishing regularity, and while the adults set curfews and hunt for maniacs a group of eleven-year-old outcasts know the truth - a supernatural entity has been terrorizing and killing the children of Derry. These seven kids eventually band together into a self-proclaimed Loser’s Club dedicated to destroy the evil they call It.
In 1985 the members of the Losers are called together again in order to fulfill a childhood promise to return to Derry if It ever returned. However, now they’re adults who have only foggy memories of exactly what they did to stop It the first time.
With this one King threw a kitchen sink full of monsters into this with the villain able to take the form of whatever will scare its latest victim the most. So the kids alternately face everything from werewolves, mummies, lepers, crawling eyes, giant birds and Frankenstein’s monster with It using the form of a demonic clown called Pennywise as the baseline. The concept that it’s the belief system of the kids that they use as their main weapon against It was a clever idea. So if it’s a werewolf and the kids believe it’s a werewolf then they also believe that silver can be used against the creature, and It has to abide by those rules.
Another of the more successful aspects of this book is how King creates seven likeable kid characters and then writes them as adults so that they really seem like the same people. Another part of this that is particularly sharp is just how well he portrays the sheer terror that each character seems to feel at one time or another. While he presents all as being brave and stepping up when it’s Big-Damn-Hero time they all also have moments where they’re pushed almost to their limits or beyond.
However, I’ve never been as high on this one as a lot of King fans are. I originally read it when I was five years older than the age of the Losers in their 1958 story so I had just left the age of childhood fantasy behind and wasn’t particularly enthralled with revisiting the concept. On the flip side of that, this was adult King engaging in a bit of nostalgia porn, and I was far too young to understand the fleeting nature of youth. Now I’m five years older than the Loser’s were in the 1985 portion of the story so it’s like I’m traveling back to the time I should be nostalgic about to listen to an older person’s nostalgia of yet an earlier time. Even though I've reread it several times over the years I've never been in sync with King’s rhythm when it comes to this one.
It’s some of King’s best work at tapping into the minds of kids as well as the bittersweet nature of looking back at that time as an adult, but it’s also one where he gave in to his worst impulses in letting the book bloat far beyond what was needed to tell the story
There’s a couple of other factors that keep this from being top shelf King for me, but they are filled with spoilers so don’t read any further if you don’t want to know.
Derry, Maine, in 1958 is a bad place to be if you’re a kid. Child disappearances and murders are occurring with astonishing regularity, and while the adults set curfews and hunt for maniacs a group of eleven-year-old outcasts know the truth - a supernatural entity has been terrorizing and killing the children of Derry. These seven kids eventually band together into a self-proclaimed Loser’s Club dedicated to destroy the evil they call It.
In 1985 the members of the Losers are called together again in order to fulfill a childhood promise to return to Derry if It ever returned. However, now they’re adults who have only foggy memories of exactly what they did to stop It the first time.
With this one King threw a kitchen sink full of monsters into this with the villain able to take the form of whatever will scare its latest victim the most. So the kids alternately face everything from werewolves, mummies, lepers, crawling eyes, giant birds and Frankenstein’s monster with It using the form of a demonic clown called Pennywise as the baseline. The concept that it’s the belief system of the kids that they use as their main weapon against It was a clever idea. So if it’s a werewolf and the kids believe it’s a werewolf then they also believe that silver can be used against the creature, and It has to abide by those rules.
Another of the more successful aspects of this book is how King creates seven likeable kid characters and then writes them as adults so that they really seem like the same people. Another part of this that is particularly sharp is just how well he portrays the sheer terror that each character seems to feel at one time or another. While he presents all as being brave and stepping up when it’s Big-Damn-Hero time they all also have moments where they’re pushed almost to their limits or beyond.
However, I’ve never been as high on this one as a lot of King fans are. I originally read it when I was five years older than the age of the Losers in their 1958 story so I had just left the age of childhood fantasy behind and wasn’t particularly enthralled with revisiting the concept. On the flip side of that, this was adult King engaging in a bit of nostalgia porn, and I was far too young to understand the fleeting nature of youth. Now I’m five years older than the Loser’s were in the 1985 portion of the story so it’s like I’m traveling back to the time I should be nostalgic about to listen to an older person’s nostalgia of yet an earlier time. Even though I've reread it several times over the years I've never been in sync with King’s rhythm when it comes to this one.
It’s some of King’s best work at tapping into the minds of kids as well as the bittersweet nature of looking back at that time as an adult, but it’s also one where he gave in to his worst impulses in letting the book bloat far beyond what was needed to tell the story
There’s a couple of other factors that keep this from being top shelf King for me, but they are filled with spoilers so don’t read any further if you don’t want to know.
July 20, 2019
De lo mejor de King. Una novela que desde un lado superficial puede causar terror por el payaso pero que desde un lado más profundo incomoda a partir de temas más humanos y, por extensión, cercanos, como la pérdida de la inocencia y la oscuridad propia del hombre.
«Tal vez no existen los buenos y los malos amigos; tal vez solo hay amigos, gente que nos apoya cuando sufrimos y que nos ayuda a no sentirnos tan solos. Tal vez siempre vale la pena sentir miedo por ellos, y esperanzas, y vivir por ellos. Tal vez también valga la pena morir por ellos, si así debe ser. No hay buenos amigos, no hay malos amigos. Solo hay personas con las que uno quiere estar, necesita estar; gente que construyó su casa en nuestro corazón».
«Tal vez no existen los buenos y los malos amigos; tal vez solo hay amigos, gente que nos apoya cuando sufrimos y que nos ayuda a no sentirnos tan solos. Tal vez siempre vale la pena sentir miedo por ellos, y esperanzas, y vivir por ellos. Tal vez también valga la pena morir por ellos, si así debe ser. No hay buenos amigos, no hay malos amigos. Solo hay personas con las que uno quiere estar, necesita estar; gente que construyó su casa en nuestro corazón».
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