re: Stephen King's IT....(Update) I take back what I said, book is fantastic

I too am reading It for the first time. Part of the problem I think is that a lot (though by no means all) of the main plot points have been given away by the mini series which id wager almost everyone in this thread has seen. I felt the same way about the first chapter, that it was slogging along but then I thought about how it might read if I didn't know what was coming and it turns into a legitimately great first chapter with a deep setting hook. I mean it's all there: destruction of innocence, violation of brotherly love, disillusion of romantics nostalgia for the 50s and all at the hands of something evil and inhuman living in the sewer. If anything, kings writing is building suspense for a climax we've already seen the bare bones of. Doesn't help either that I can only imagine Tim curry as penny wise which I get the sense vastly undersells the unsettling nature of what this thing could be.

Yep. There was no movie or anything to distract me from the building when I first read it. I've put Tim Curry to the side in my second reading. I barely remember that, anyway.

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I read many of his books when I was a teenager and remember being scared to turn the page while reading The Shining. LOL But one of my favorites was Pet Sematary. I still remember the description of the child running toward the road and the Father helpless to stop him. Then the dilemma that followed. I always felt like he had a way of tapping in to peoples deepest fears and digging around in there. Even as a teenager and maybe because I was a teenager I appreciated that perspective. If I read them again as an adult (and parent) I'm sure it would be even more terrifying.

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take back what I said, book is fantastic

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Good.

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This book is really hooking me. 

I'm having trouble putting it down now.

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Where are you in the book?

When you're finished you need tongo read The Stand, The Talisman, and Salem's Lot

About 300 pages in. Just had to get to the characters themselves.

The fear they are all feeling just heading back to Derry...

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You shouldn't have started with IT

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Keep your nonsense in the other thread. The book went over your head.

I can't even begin to pick A favorite. IT was great. I love the dark tower books and how they cross over with so many other books.

For those that have trouble with his early stuff, the Mr. Mercedes books (I'm slipping, can't recall the names of all three) are pretty damn strong. Not horror. Dime store detective style novels. Read them in order.

Needful Things didn't impress me as much as some of his other work. Pet Sematary tips the list for me, but the Dark Tower series is way up there. The Wizard and the Glass was a hell of a way to cliffhang a series for twenty years.

Finished It tonight for the first time and I thought it was great.

One of the creepiest parts for me was when Mike's dad was telling him about the fire at The Black Spot. After he was pulled out of the fire, before he passed out, he saw the giant bird that chased Mike. When I read that I was like "oh shite!"

I'm planning on reading Salem's Lot next.