It

It
By Stephen King
1980
Signet Books
1093 pages
ISBN: 978-0-451-16951-8

Since I got my iPhone this past spring, I have been listening to books from the Cincinnati Public Library using the Overdrive app. I freaking LOVE the fact that I can do this. Especially because listening to an audiobook makes my commute more pleasant, whether I am walking or taking the shuttle. My main complaint about the system is that I have found the selection of books a little limited (not only because there actually aren't too many books available, but also because there are limits on the number of people that can be using a file at any given moment, so things that I want to listen to are often "checked out.") But overall, I love the system, and I totally recommend it to anyone that (like me) wants to be reading during times that they really need to be doing activities other than reading.

This book popped up in the Overdrive list one day when I was browsing, looking for the next thing to "read" and I thought that it would be fun. And so I downloaded it and started listening.

Stephen King, like myself, is a purist about these things, and therefore doesn't allow abridgments of his work for audiobooks. I love that about him, indeed, I don't listen to abridgments, but it was a problem in this case. When I decided to listen to this through the overdrive program, I didn't really think about the fact that this book is huge. The audio is 44 hours long. Unfortunately, I only had two weeks. You can theoretically renew audiobook files, but you can't ACTUALLY review audiobook files, because there is pretty much always someone that has the book that you are reading on hold. I got through about half of the story in those two weeks, and I was VERY sad to see the files expire. But I was hooked enough that I decided that reading the rest of the book was the best course of action, because there was no way that I was going to wait for the file to be "returned" by the person after me. So I went and got the paperback version and read the rest in the more traditional way.

So first, some comments on the audiobook. The reading is apparently performed by Steven Weber, although he was not specifically credited anywhere in the file that I could find. He does an AMAZING job. This is a wonderful performance. He gives life and personality to the stutter of Bill Denbrook, a deeply creepy rasping Pennywise, all the various voices of Richie Tozier, and all the Maine accents a girl could ask for. If you are a fan of audiobooks, and have some time on your hands, I actually think that the experience of listening to this was better than the experience of reading it. I usually don't specifically recommend the audio version of a book, but in this case, I think that it deserves a plug. To be honest, I probably even enjoyed the second half of the book more for having listened to the first half, because I was able to carry on the characterizations Weber created in my own mind as I moved forward.

In short, the audio is great. Make sure that you have access to it for as long as it will take you to listen to 44 hours worth of story.

And what a story. King is great here in a style that particularly becomes him, weaving action in the present with flashbacks to the past. This weaving style reminded me in many ways of Dreamcatcher, but King is FAR more successful in It. Both the present and the past action are deeply compelling, and even though you know that these adults must have gotten away from the monster as children, indeed defeated it somehow, that someHOW? is a roaring question as burning as how it will turn out the second time. Pennywise, It, is a deeply scary monster, perhaps King's scariest, and the bulk of the novel comes from rich detail and beautiful complicated characterizations that allow you to care deeply for a larger cast of characters than most narratives can support.

 There is a reason this novel is famous. There is a reason the vision of the creepy clown on the cover was a picture that stuck in my mind even before I read this book. If you are a fan, this is up there with The Stand. Epic long, and epicly worth it.