The idea is delightfully simple: for 30 days, you post once a day in response to a book-themed question. That’s it. No essays, no footnotes, no need to summon the ghost of Shakespeare, just honest answers, curious reflections, and maybe a few cheeky confessions about your reading habits. I have decided to take part this year, and since I picked a month with 31 days (I know it would have made more sense to use a 30 day one) I am using March 1st to explain what I am doing.

Each day brings a new prompt: favourite characters, memorable endings, guilty pleasures, and the books that made you weep, rage, or fall in love with the written word. It’s a gentle nudge to celebrate your literary life, one post at a time.

So why not give it a go? Dust off your bookshelf, sharpen your wit, and join the challenge. Thirty days. Thirty questions. One slightly eccentric bookworm’s journey through the pages.

DAY 25. – The most surprising plot twist or ending.

I am going to choose a plot twist rather than an ending, and my pick is Stephen King’s IT.

I first read IT after watching the 1990 miniseries, so I thought I had a decent grasp of the story. I had seen the film, I knew the shape of the plot, and I assumed the book would simply fill in a few gaps. Well, I had the basics, but I was missing an entire universe worth of detail.

If you have only ever watched the miniseries or the later films, you would be genuinely shocked to discover that one of the most important characters in the entire story is Maturin the Space Turtle. Think of the great A’Tuin, only without the elephants and without the discworld balanced on top. Yes, you read that correctly. There is a cosmic turtle in IT who guides the Losers Club, grants them insight, and plays a vital role in the battle against Pennywise. And to be fair, a space turtle is not that strange when you remember that Pennywise is essentially a space spider. I suspect there were many substances involved in the creative process.

But the biggest surprise in reading IT is the moment that every reader remembers. Those who have read it already know exactly what I am about to mention. The scene. The infamous scene. The Losers Gang Bang.

You read that correctly. In the book, when the Losers Club are children trapped in the sewers, lost and terrified with Pennywise hunting them, they cannot find their way out. This is the point where Beverly, the only girl in the group, decides that the solution is to have sex with each of the six boys, one after the other, in order to bring the group back together and help them escape. And the moment she finishes, one of the boys suddenly remembers the correct path, and they all make it out alive.

It makes no sense in the plot. It adds nothing to the story. It is not needed in any way. Yet there it is, sitting in the middle of the book like a fever dream that somehow made it past every editor. It remains, to this day, the most surprising plot twist I have ever encountered in any novel.

Nothing else even comes close.