Just Finished Reading It by Stephen King

During that personally highly productive decade I've hitherto referred to as the "Aughts", I read most of Stephen Kings novels published to date, including the very, very long 1985 work titled It. "It"'s been adapted at least twice to movies as well as a TV series...after seeing on-screen adaptations of earlier King stories straying too far from the author's original narrative, I decided to pass up on them. Instead, I just finished reading It for a second time, after the more recently written King novel 11/22/63 has a scene taking place in It's setting of Derry, Maine, a fictional and bedeviled town that is also the primary location of his 1993 novel Insomnia (also a personal favorite). It is split into two parallel narratives, between the years 1958 and 1985.  The heroes are seven Derry children, self-dubbed "The Losers", who find themselves united through common circumstances against bullies as well as a sense of benevolence and genuine liking toward each other.  They make common cause against a murderous presence in the town, which takes different forms but primarily as a sinister clown named Pennywise...it killed George, the little brother of "Stuttering'" Bill Denbrough, and that set off the series of events leading to this gang of heroes forming in the strange local marshes called the Barrens.  It's already established at the novel's start that the seven all survived their childhood encounters with the evil entity, which not only kills but invades people's consciousness with negative and violent thoughts.  But whatever happened in 1958 did not lead it to It's demise, for it is back in Derry in 1985 as more people are turning up gruesomely killed...the seven are summoned in adulthood to finish the job they had begun 27 years earlier.  Stephen King delved deeply into the story's different characters, evoking little memories of my own past from snippets of the different children's experiences.  One different thing: the Losers were free to run around loose and form their own friendships, while my own parents were very restrictive and strict about me leaving the house to hang around others (although they, like King's "losers", had no such restrictions placed on themselves in their childhood).  Reading this thriller horror story the second time around was a wholly different experience, primarily because, naturally, I already knew how it would turn out.  One other thing without giving away the story: it was interesting how the protagonists underwent a general memory loss about not only their earlier experiences but also about one another.  I wander if the author was trying to convey something about human nature with this.  It is a good, albeit very scary novel, and requires a generous amount of time devoted to reading it.  My favorite excerpt comes at the very end, with a tumultuous bicycle ride downhill...who knew such a thing could bring tears to one's eyes?  I am currently rereading Stephen King's Insomnia, which as mentioned before is also set in Derry, but in the year 1991.  Not only was I impressed by the sensitivity shown to the elderly in this story, but it is also connected with the author's standout fantasy series The Dark Tower.   I've also been reading Neil deGrasse Tyson's latest popular science book Starry Messenger...I'll have a few things to say about it in a future article...