It - Stephen King

I really enjoyed It. It's a pretty long book to read through, but the length is justified and applied to the right areas. Stephen King excels in developing characters development and building relationships between them when he's at his best.

I watched the movies as well, and they were pretty good, given the constraints of the medium - some of the scenes have to change (or be swapped out entirely) because you can't convey psychological terror all that well on the silver screen. By only watching the movies, you do miss out on quite a bit of detail. The things I missed the most:

• Slower pacing.
• Secondary antagonist development. Beverly's father, the Bowers (father and son), and Patrick H. were all much more compelling in the book. I think the movies could have done better by Henry Bowers, especially.
• Bonds between the protagonists. I get that the movie can't cover all of the adventures and shenanigans The Losers Club got into, but even the ones that were included didn't hit home for me.
• The discovery and recounting of the history of Derry, Maine. An understandable exclusion, but really hurt Mike Hanlon's character.
• General Stephen King weirdness and more serious adult themes.

In short, the movie doesn't capture the true spirit of the book, but I don't know that I really expected it to.

I've heard that the ending was controversial (see earlier reference to "general Stephen King weirdness"), but I think it worked OK, and the movie did a good job of altering it, or rather completely changing it, to something that worked for a wider audience. Even as a person that was left very salty about the end of the Dark Tower series, I think the book's ending was fine. I'll admit that I kind of sped through it, because part of me figures that's what Stephen King did when he wrote it. Note that I don't say that as an attack on his writing, but as an understanding that he focuses on the journey rather than the destination. King adds endings to his stories because they're required to make them coherent, but I don't get the impression that he enjoys the process of it.

Highly recommend. Don't feel that you'll be wasting your time reading the book if you've seen the movies. It's not just a matter of deleted scenes; it's a matter of having a wide spread of characters that are excellently and deeply developed in a way no movie of a reasonable length can ever hope to accomplish.