It

It took me more time to finish It than it has any other book, and not because it was 1,100+ pages long. Somewhere around the halfway point I LJ posted asking if it got better, and folks told me it did. Luckily I found the same thing, but it didn't get better enough. It went from "unreadable" to "barely readable" -- but "barely readable" only story-wise; style-wise it was just the opposite.

Imagine a book with entire chapters (multi-page chapters) with no paragraph breaks. Yes, paragraphs that are multiple pages (of very small type) long. More than once.

Imagine many, many chapters entirely in italics.

And we won't mention that the first 500+ pages of the book had nothing to do with the story. (Someone (quasilemur?) told me the book had started as a history of Derby but was changed at the end to be a horror story about It. That's all fine and dandy, but it was marketed as a story about It, not about Derby. The title and summary should have reflected the book's real content/story ... or they could have just cut out the first 500 pages and made it match the title/summary).

Every time I grumbled to myself about the book, thoughts of The Long Walk returned. Another story by King, but as different as day and night: Short, intense, every word counted, and I still feel the emotional impact of the story. (If it wasn't cliche to do so, I'd say the last line still haunted me.) I can't see myself ever forgetting The Long Walk, but I can't forget It soon enough.

It

It took me more time to finish It than it has any other book, and not because it was 1,100+ pages long. Somewhere around the halfway point I LJ posted asking if it got better, and folks told me it did. Luckily I found the same thing, but it didn't get better enough. It went from "unreadable" to "barely readable" -- but "barely readable" only story-wise; style-wise it was just the opposite.

Imagine a book with entire chapters (multi-page chapters) with no paragraph breaks. Yes, paragraphs that are multiple pages (of very small type) long. More than once.

Imagine many, many chapters entirely in italics.

And we won't mention that the first 500+ pages of the book had nothing to do with the story. (Someone (quasilemur?) told me the book had started as a history of Derby but was changed at the end to be a horror story about It. That's all fine and dandy, but it was marketed as a story about It, not about Derby. The title and summary should have reflected the book's real content/story ... or they could have just cut out the first 500 pages and made it match the title/summary).

Every time I grumbled to myself about the book, thoughts of The Long Walk returned. Another story by King, but as different as day and night: Short, intense, every word counted, and I still feel the emotional impact of the story. (If it wasn't cliche to do so, I'd say the last line still haunted me.) I can't see myself ever forgetting The Long Walk, but I can't forget It soon enough.

Old meme, but zubis made me do it:

If you woke up and I was in bed with you, what would be your first thought?

Reply here, then post the above line in your own journal. (If you like. If you don't, I won't call the Internet Police on you or anything.)

Edit: Oh crap. I used my "I licked you!" icon for this post, and then decided to change it back to my default icon... but deleted it by mistake. I hope I have a copy of it saved at home.

Old meme, but zubis made me do it:

If you woke up and I was in bed with you, what would be your first thought?

Reply here, then post the above line in your own journal. (If you like. If you don't, I won't call the Internet Police on you or anything.)

Edit: Oh crap. I used my "I licked you!" icon for this post, and then decided to change it back to my default icon... but deleted it by mistake. I hope I have a copy of it saved at home.

Dear S-E: You suck. No Love, Thistle (FFXI and WoW)

So after another 8+ hour downtime in a week, the servers finally came back up. (On time! For once!) But, since S-E fixed the issue as well as they ever do, I had a brand new login/logout issue and now can't get back on!

Typed /logout so I could switch to a mule, screen went black... then nothing. Yay for servers that work!

And of course now I can't get back on. Ha ha ha.

If I can't get back on before finishing this post, to hell with it. I'll play WoW for the rest of the night.

---

When in a WoW Halloween costume, the icon has a bit of funny text about your outfit. Like when I was twice as big and orange it said something like "You feel very large and... orange.". I have no idea what this one says about the Blizzard people. :P My costume turned me into a female human (so tiny!), and the text up top made me peer and then snicker.

While out leveling, I ran into an Elite! Woo! And yes, no matter my previous conversations and no matter that it was higher level than me, I pounced on it! Thunderstomp! A big, green... eh, electric dinosaur thing! You can't see Pitch (my pet) at all, the dinosaur thing was so big he totally covered the poor puppy.

Oddly, Thunderstomp was a major push-over. He was even easier than other things his level. o.O Didn't get any outstanding drops, just a piece of armor.

Oh, and one last odd thing! They never taught this trick to FFXI mobs (thank god). What the heck is up with mobs that can go invisible, sneak up on you (not show up on mob radar) and attack? Sheesh!

Still can't get back on FFXI, so it's back to WoW for me.

Dear S-E: You suck. No Love, Thistle (FFXI and WoW)

So after another 8+ hour downtime in a week, the servers finally came back up. (On time! For once!) But, since S-E fixed the issue as well as they ever do, I had a brand new login/logout issue and now can't get back on!

Typed /logout so I could switch to a mule, screen went black... then nothing. Yay for servers that work!

And of course now I can't get back on. Ha ha ha.

If I can't get back on before finishing this post, to hell with it. I'll play WoW for the rest of the night.

---

When in a WoW Halloween costume, the icon has a bit of funny text about your outfit. Like when I was twice as big and orange it said something like "You feel very large and... orange.". I have no idea what this one says about the Blizzard people. :P My costume turned me into a female human (so tiny!), and the text up top made me peer and then snicker.

While out leveling, I ran into an Elite! Woo! And yes, no matter my previous conversations and no matter that it was higher level than me, I pounced on it! Thunderstomp! A big, green... eh, electric dinosaur thing! You can't see Pitch (my pet) at all, the dinosaur thing was so big he totally covered the poor puppy.

Oddly, Thunderstomp was a major push-over. He was even easier than other things his level. o.O Didn't get any outstanding drops, just a piece of armor.

Oh, and one last odd thing! They never taught this trick to FFXI mobs (thank god). What the heck is up with mobs that can go invisible, sneak up on you (not show up on mob radar) and attack? Sheesh!

Still can't get back on FFXI, so it's back to WoW for me.