It / Stephen King / 1,138 pages

It is a 1986 horror novel by Stephen King, and is one of his longest books written to date.

Georgie Denbrough was always afraid of what could be lurking in the basement, but when he was playing outside after a heavy rain in Derry, Maine in 1957, he learned too late that It was not in the basement, but in the sewer drain; he was killed as a result.  27 years later, in 1985, after a man named Adrian Mellon was said to be killed by something that looked like a clown, a resident of Derry calls his childhood friends-- "The Losers"-- to come to Derry to destroy It once and for all. Jumping between summer of 1958 and 1985, The Losers have to deal with the psychological tortures It puts them through, a psychopathic childhood bully and escaped convict, and the reasons they forgot EVERYTHING that happened in Derry, including the very existence of Derry.

There were a lot of ups and downs in this book, and I mean a lot; therefore, I'll start with a few of the downs.

Downs:
First off, I wasn't agreeing with Richie's character voices, as a lot of them come off as racist.  I mean, okay, one could argue that It was 1958 when nothing was politically correct, but still.

Another flaw is that the book sometimes flows away to another story almost irrelevant to the plot, mostly backstories to minor characters, but on the flip side...


Ups:
... they all manage to connect to the same problem that is It.

Okay, as someone who usually listens to audio books, I don't really review the narrators, but I'm going to say It right now: Stephen Weber's performance was phenomenal.  I'm serious.  I haven't heard a narrator that really kept me at the edge of my seat since, well, ever (I guess it's my first time).  As for the voices, he gives a distinct voice to each character (especially "Stuttering Bill" Denbrough) that would make Jim Dale proud.

Also, this book isn't really about a scary clown--if I could describe this story using a pie chart, only 9% of It would show the clown.  I'd say a more appropriate definition is that It's about one's worst nightmares, whatever It may be, coming to life to kill them.

Another part that I had both ups and downs about was the ending.  It became a lot more supernatural than just something with various forms, and I almost asked myself, "This is the same book, right?"  But that's kind of the fun of It.

Overall, I'd recommend It to anyone who either has the time to read the whole book or has the time to listen to all 35 CDs (I promise, the latter is worth It).

11/22/63 / Stephen King / 842 pgs

This book has been recommended to me SO many times over the last couple of years, but for some reason, I have only now finally read it. I don't WHY it took me so long! I love alternative history. I love time travel. I just knew it was a really big book. Even then, I'm unsure why that would daunt me. I used to love reading long books.

Anyways, it was a great book. I have very little, if anything, I can say negative about it other than the length. I feel it could have probably thinned down a bit, cutting out a bit of the repetition, but the book intrigued me and put me on the edge of my seat regardless.

Jake Epping is a recently divorced high school English teacher in Maine. When a friend, the owner of a local diner, calls Jake to come over to the diner, Jake learns of sort of "rabbit hole" through which one can travel back to a certain date and time in 1958. However, Jake is given a task that will change his life, and perhaps the lives of everyone else in the world - stay in the past and find a way to stop the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.