#SpookySaturday

Welcome to my very first Spooky Saturday!

I have been a fan of horror and mystery novels since I first started reading even though they scare the hell out of me. I remember being a little kid and being allowed to check out Goosebumps book from the “big kid” section of the school library because I was an accelerated reader. Although my parents protested me reading them (they knew I was a big chicken), I devoured all that I could during the school year… and promptly had nightmares every night. Not much has changed. I still love scary stories and I still have nightmares about them! (Fear is healthy… I think)

This week I started reading the infamous IT by Stephen King which is a massive undertaking for me for two reasons: IT is a literal giant at 1200 pages and Pennywise the Clown has haunted me since I was a child. I’m pretty sure my fear of clowns actually stem from Pennywise. Now that I’m older, I feel like I can tackle this book with (hopefully) little emotional scarring.

I’ve read about 200 pages so far and my goal is to read 100 per day so that I’m not making this novel last for months. In the book up to the point, I’ve seen Georgie’s death, the murder of Adrian Mellon, and met all of the main characters as adults. King does have a gift for info dumping without it dragging down the pace or the plot, so I always give him kudos for that.

However, this is a King novel. King is, well, the King of my problematic favorites. Read all of his books with extreme caution and remember that the bulk of his work were written in a time where white male writers were not questioned when they used slurs. In typical King fashion, most of his characters are introduced while they are either naked or having sex and there is an almost pornographic quality to the way King introduces them by their genitals. Prepare yourself to read way too much about pointy breasts and exclamation mark penises. Ugh.

I don’t remember much about the original IT except the fact that John-Boy Walton and Seth Green was it and I had a huge crush on both Bev and Ben. Everything in this story will be pretty new to me and I’m avoiding spoilers as much as possible.

The first two hundred pages sets up the back story for the book. The story starts of with the death of Georgie Denbrough in 1957 at the hands of IT, a seemingly demonic force that manifests as a clown and lives in the sewers. Skipping forward to 1985, we witness another murder and another manifestation of IT. From there, we met the adult characters of the book and learn a snip of each of their lives after they get a call to come back to Derry, Maine… because as children they made an oath to return if IT ever did… and IT has come back.

In the first two hundred pages, I love how King has blended the supernatural with the evils of the human spirit. Would IT have gotten Adrian Mellon if it weren’t for those 3 men? There’s also the supernatural and psychological element that all the adults literally forgot what happened to them as kids, forgot Derry, and in Bill’s case, forgot his younger brother Georgie, until they receive the call to come home. I’m interested to see if this is a supernatural element or if this is a psychological response to whatever terror IT reigned on them.

Have you read any spooky books lately? Have an recommendations? Let me know!

200 pages in and 1 nightmare later… this is going to take a while…