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Currently traumatizing myself by also casting the movie in my head and let me tell you, Toni Collete, that you will not be snubbed again come Oscar season.
(Full review eventually. Maybe not. It's really good and I'm on page 68. Read it.)
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“Oh, that book.” Yes.
I feel like It is thought of more often as a concept of a book/story or dismissed with a “Yeah, yeah” rather than considered an actual thing you can sit down and read. Not that it is generally despised (other than *that* scene, and yes, I completely agree), but I feel as if so few people care enough to try reading it. And with its massively popular adaptation into the 2017/2019 films, the way It as a story is viewed by the public has completely changed, and today’s tweens probably don’t even know who the director of the films is, let alone Stephen King.
Last summer, I read this book. I started it at the beach at home, but on that fateful day, the waves crashed onto my family’s belongings, taking with them a lunchbox of fruits and one flip-flop of mine (RIP). The next day, we left for a five-day trip, so I was stuck with a very old, very waterlogged, engorged, warped copy of the book. On the very long car rides over the next days, I knocked out over half of It, and spent scorching days by the pool doing the same. On the way home, I began to wrap it up.
When I got back, a hardcover was waiting in the mail for me. And with the last moments of my carefree summer days, I sat in the sunset with my brand new copy of an old story, living vicariously through 7 kids experiencing their last summer together. The red light of the fading yet radiant sunset shone onto my face, and the darkness settled in as I turned the last page.
I have never felt so many things at once. With me, I carried a palpable yet arguably unfounded sense of nostalgia endlessly afterward, and I felt as if I had lived through multiple childhoods and adulthoods in just one summer. I felt devastated and content, hopeless and happy. There is no one emotion I could tie to experiencing 1153 pages of It. It’s just It. It amazes me that on my shelf is an entire world, embossed with the proud “FROM THE LIBRARY OF,” expectant, waiting to be reopened, re-experienced, relived.
This summer will forever be engrained in my memory, and although I say this as a young person, the summer I spent in Sequoia Tree Park amidst gargantuan trees and rolling mountainscapes is the summer I grew up with seven Losers, just trying to get by and go forth with their lives.
Jan 28, 2025
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The book and the movie, even if you’ve already finished one or the other. They’re striking in different ways, and I loved both experiences. The book takes its time with each conversation in a way that the movie can’t, and for your patience you get some incredibly potent and profound exchanges and moments of shared reflection.
Feb 5, 2024
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I read this one a few weeks ago, but wanted to wait until I saw the movie before diving into my thoughts. Both start extremely similar, down to some exact word-for-word scenes, and the plot points are all the same, but the movie takes some creative license to show what’s going on for the main characters mentally that the book doesn't. This works in favor for both the book and movie. In the book's case you're left guessing, confused, and trying to pick apart every tiny detail til the very end. The author is continuously sneaking small details/hints past you without raising alarm, and at the end I found myself looking back to see a whole different story. This isn't to say I didn't see the twist coming, but it was done in a way that left plenty of good stuff to pick apart after you‘ve finished.
Oct 2, 2020
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Nov 22, 2024
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Permanently infiltrated my vocabulary I can't stop saying it
Dec 3, 2024
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