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Interesting that for each member of the group there's a clear Call to Adventure but NOT a Refusal; each of them so far has been terrified, but unable to refuse. King does a great job of describing the combination of terror and inevitability.

ALSO! Something else I noticed at the time but read past: when Pennywise introduces himself to Georgie, he says he also has another name - Grey Bob? Something like that - but it is "Pennywise the Dancing Clown" that the non-Georgie narrator latches onto and repeats.

Again: WHY?

Really, Patty? You've never knocked on the bathroom door when it was closed?! JEEZ. Rude. ;D

So Bill Denbrough has become a horror writer, creating novels that are described as "full of monsters chasing after little children... bad feelings and hurt." And the same character says he's "not a REAL writer." Self insertion, here we come?

Given that the perps ran off together, why doesn't Gardener think they could have influenced each others' stories before they were interviewed??

The interconnection between creativity and destruction is intriguing; Adrian wants to stay in Derry because he was writing a novel and was more inspired; he said the "air was better."

Also, why a clown? Not in terms of the author choosing that - more the creature.

Brings to mind a saying that I don't remember where I first heard - "Don't fault a cat for being a cat."

I want to know more about the creature.

Moving kind of slow but relatively easy reading. Interesting use of POV, mostly in Georgie's head at the beginning, with interjections from an omniscient narrator.

Lots of names. Having difficulty remembering who people are because they're not consistent. Had to go looking back for who "that Unwin boy" was.

"At a moment of focus on the importance of exercise... do what you can for this motivation to linger once you've tunneled elsewhere."

"Paradoxically, scarcity increases the chance you'll need a quick fix, as well as the chance that some such fixes will hurt you."

"Yet so many good behaviors require vigilance: being a good parent, saving money, or eating right."

"Increasing work hours, working people harder, forgoing vacations, and so on are all tunneling responses, like borrowing at high interest. They ignore the long-term consequences."

(continued) Dealing with patients quickly lowered quality: patients were more likely to die. In fact, even the benefits did not persist. A sustained increase in workload eventually led to an increase in the time it took to manage each patient."

"Another study looked at what happened in a cardiothoracic surgery department when the number of patients per medical service worker increased. Again, there was an increase in productivity in the short run. Patients were dealt with more quickly. But this came at a cost. There was neglect. (continued)

"One study, on construction projects, found that 'where a work schedule of 60 or more hours per week is continued longer than about two months, the cumulative effect of decreased productivity will cause a delay in the completion date beyond that which could have been realized with the same crew size on a 40-hour week.'"

"In the United States, something as simple as inconsistent work hours (this week you work fifty hours , but next week you get only thirty) can cause juggling and perpetuate scarcity. A solution would be to create the equivalent of unemployment insurance against such fluctuations in work hours, which to the poor can be even more pernicious than job loss."

"frequent interim deadlines have a greater impact than a single distant deadline."

"A long-term limit, like a distant deadline, becomes pressing only as it approaches, toward the end."

"An overtaxed bandwidth means a reduced ability to process new information. How much of a lecture will you absorb if your mind constantly gets pulled away? Now think of a low-income college student whose mind keeps going back to making rent. How much will she absorb? Our data above suggest that much fo the correlation between income and classroom performance may be explained by the bandwidth tax."

"poor parents receive food stamps once a month, but by the end of each month they are running short. The end of the month is when their bandwidth is most taxed, the time when parenting is likely to be toughest. The economist Lisa Gennetian and her colleagues showed that these are also the times when children of parents who receive food stamps were most likely to be acting out and end up being disciplined in school."

"Being a good parent, even when you know what to do, is hard. Consistency requires constant attention, effort, and steadfastness."

"Poverty means scarcity in the very commodity that underpins almost all other aspects of life."

"You can hire a nanny or a maid, order in food rather than cook, use an accountant, employ a gardener, all of which free up time. Similarly, if you are on a diet, with plenty of money, you can buy tasty but healthy food. Money, because it is fungible, can be used to compensate for other forms of scarcity."

"The problem of the lonely was not that they were boring or otherwise unappealing. Their problem was that they performed badly when they thought it mattered."

"Decades of research have shown that even -- no, especially -- at the best of times we are prone to procrastination, an exaggerated focus on the present, and bouts of fuzzy optimism."

"Scarcity is not merely the gap between resources and desires on average... It is as important to have enough slack (or some other mechanism) for handling the big shocks that may come one's way at any moment."

"Recent research shows that self-control may actually get depleted as we use it." Question - at what rate is it replenished?

"Juggling makes getting out even harder. The unexpected happens. You have finally made a pan to climb out, and suddenly you are hit with a ticket for an expired car registration... One more obligation, and you are back in the scarcity trap."