Daily Shenanigans, 08/02/2014: Victory is mine!

I've finally done it! I've got all the way through Stephen King's 'It'! It has been a long journey, but I have succeeded in my goal of finishing it today, and now I am up to date on my 2014 Book Challenge. Hooray! The review I have already posted earlier this afternoon, so go and check that out if you want to know what I thought of the epic novel. I have already started working on my next read which, as promised, will be Andrew Miller's 'Pure'. Looking forward to this one, what I've read so far is intriguing to say the least. Also it's much shorter (a whole 1000 pages or so), which I think I need  while I recover from the last book before I dive into 'Inheritance' and 'The Wise Man's Fear' which are both long books too.

As for what else I've been doing all day, the short answer is not a huge amount. I woke up fairly late this morning (well, late for me) and managed to send out an email that has been bugging me for a while and took a great deal of weight off my mind. After that, I switched between browsing the internet, reading, updating my Goodreads account and just general procrastination. I've had a horrible headache that despite copious amounts of painkillers, has refused to go away all day and I've generally felt a bit drained today. My mood was much better when I woke up though!

This evening I've spent with Mat, who bought his 3DS round and we played some Pokémon (I was devastated, he didn't bring the Yu-Gi-Oh cards!) We were originally going to watch 'Robocop' at the cinema but decided against it because we were both tired and my head was still hurting. To be honest, it was just nice to relax this weekend and not have to go out anywhere. The weather is still absolutely terrible and it looks like it won't stop being rainy and windy for a while. I'm definitely looking forward to when the sun decides to come out, I miss walking and actually wanting to venture outside. I'm off to spend the rest of the evening reading with a cup of tea before bed, so I'm posting this a little early.

Book Review: IT; Stephen King

Well, after days of battle against this book, I have finally emerged victorious. The book is finished. There will probably be some minor spoilers here, so if you'd rather not know then don't read! 

SOURCE: Bought
TYPE: Paperback

TITLE: IT
AUTHOR: Stephen King
SERIES: --
PUBLISHER: Hodder & Stoughton
PAGES: 1376
GENRE: Horror, Thriller, Supernatural, Suspense

RATING: 3/5 Stars


Blurb

It is the children who see - and feel - what makes the small town of Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurks, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT reaches up, seizing, tearing, killing...

Time passes and the children grow up, move away and forget. Until they are called back once more to confront IT as it stirs and coils in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.

What I Liked:

• Stephen King has a great grip on his setting. I was stunned by just how well he knew the town of Derry. It is my understanding that a great many of his books are set there and so at this point, I imagine he had become quite comfortable with this particular setting. But the intricate and well thought out descriptions found throughout the book meant that I could see Kansas Street, the Barrens, even the dripping sewers where It's lair was found.
• His characterisation too, is marvelous. King tells the story of Derry using a variety of different viewpoints, travelling back and forth between the pasts of the seven individuals and their present day lives. Every single character he wrote (and there were a lot) was both memorable and believable, and this was vital in order to keep track of the story. It jumped around a lot, but this presented absolutely no problem for me.

What I Disliked:

• The pace of this book is excruciatingly slow at times. The novel is long. And I mean long. For some, this might not be a bad thing, but for me I found in certain areas that I became a little (dare I say it) bored. Whenever the children encountered It, the pace would pick up and I would become engrossed in the action. But the huge amounts of back-story and detail that King used just made things a little too drawn out for me most of the time. I found that as the end approached and King built up to the climax of the story, the situation improved and I wish that the rest of the book had been a bit more like that.
• I wasn't scared enough. I'll probably be shot for this bombshell, but honestly, I really expected much more. The concept of a monster that can disguise itself as your worst nightmares and feeds on your fears is a terrifying one, but I found that each encounter barely chilled me. Perhaps it was because these fears were normally so specific that I couldn't relate to them myself. Perhaps it was because It had a sense of humour and would often inject these frightening visions with a bit of comedy (It's most common form was a clown, this to me says a lot). Most of the time, the images were vivid and horrific but I never felt truly frightened, which I was expecting from my first Stephen King read. In fact, I felt more fearful for the lives of the children when they were being chased by the town bully than when they met the monster.

Overall Conclusion:
Overall though, despite its slow pace (a common trait of Stephen King's stories, so I hear) and the lack of 'scare factor' I did still enjoy it as a story. I don't think the problem is the book, or the author. Stephen King is no doubt a master at his art. I think it is that I haven't found the right Stephen King book to scare me. It was still good enough that I would happily pick up another of his books and try again, because I did see a lot of potential in this one and if I found the right 'monster' as it were, I think I could be truly frightened.

Daily Shenanigans, 06/02/2014: Goodreads First Reads winner!

Spent most of the day acting as a Taxi service for various members of my family due to the terrible weather. Honestly, it hasn't stopped raining since yesterday evening and I'm going to have to catch the train to Uni tomorrow because a lot of roads are flooded. Other than that, most of my day was filled with  the usual list of bits and bobs to do.

The most exciting part of my day was logging onto my Goodreads account and finding out that I had won a book from the numerous giveaways that they do! I was not expecting it at all, so many people enter them and I can't wait for it to arrive so that I can get stuck into it. The book is called 'Wolves' by Simon Ings, it was only released a month ago(ish) and I haven't heard many reviews about it so it should be interesting to read and of course I'll be reviewing it for you guys! 

I know this is a short post but I really don't have much more to say. I have basically finished 'It' and so a review of that will be up in the next couple of days. I'm off to Uni, then lunch, then seeing Mat (my boyfriend) tomorrow so there will be a lot more to talk about!