Stephen King is the kind of writer I wish I was. Book after book, year after year, the man keeps truckin', no matter what. He's responsible for perhaps half of the reading material on my bookshelf right now, and was the author of the first book over 1000 pages that I ever read. I can even remember what book it was. I read the unabridged version of The Stand during the month of October during my seventh grade year. The Dark Tower series remains one of my favorite series ever.
Now that you know where I'm coming from as a SK fan, let me get to the point of this: Joyland, the second of King's books published with Hard Case Crime, the other being The Colorado Kid, another book on my shelf. This book follows Devin Jones, most often called Dev or Jonesy, during his summer job at the amusement park called Joyland. For the most part, we follow the 21 year old through the normal new job stuff: learning where stuff is, the lingo and the technical bits of running the park. We also see him "wearing the fur", and no, I'm not going to tell you what that is. Read the book. There's a cast of colorful characters throughout the book, which every Stephen King fan expects.
I really don't want to say too much about what goes on, or this article will start to be spoiler-laden. All I will say is that it took me a little under 3 days to read the book. While it's not a beefy tome by any means, I'm surprised at how quickly it went. A very fast read, but now I'm bummed out that I've finished it. A great book for anybody who likes Stephen King, mysteries or gets off on the whole carny thing.
