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thistlechaserIt 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 (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
