Jordan Millner is a high school ESL teacher in the Washington, D.C. area who writes fiction in her spare time. She is not an avid poetry fan, but her all-time favorite work of literature is Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Her favorite young adult novel is Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, and her favorite piece of “literary fiction” alternates between James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, any short story by Joyce Carol Oates, and others she inevitably leaves out. She falls asleep watching Stephen King’s Misery every night. You can find her online at Two-Legged Animal.
Stephen King’s 1978 Night Shift takes advantage of the “safe” scare, but the story collection’s real artistry is in accessing his reader’s willingness to endure “safe” fear and turning it on the reader himself.
Stephen King’s newest novel, Joyland, is set in a North Carolina amusement park during the summer of 1973. Like the attractions that populate the book, it’s a read perhaps more enjoyable for the ride than the destination.
