Book 143: Guns by Stephen King (An Essay)

Stephen King has been my favorite author since I was a teenager, sneaking his books home with me from the library and terrifying myself into insomnia for nights on end.

Guns is not a book but an essay that Stephen King wrote and released as a Kindle single through Amazon. It is a commentary on the mass shootings that have plagued our country beginning with the Columbine shootings in 1999. King describes shooters as young men take the lives of others for reasons they themselves cannot even provide once the deed is done, if they survive.

In Guns, King expresses his views about the ownership and use of assault rifles in the U.S. As a handgun owner, he does not argue against citizens' right to bear arms. Instead, he argues that an assault rifle with a high capacity clip has but one purpose: to kill people, and a lot of them at once. The key is to reduce the numbers of assault rifles in our society.

This short essay was followed by an epilogue, the end of which states that 80 people are shot and killed every day in the United States.

Pick this up. It might make you mad.

Yep. This is tough.

Reading two books a week is not easy. It is really, really not easy.

I have noticed, however, that this goal is already making me more resourceful. First, I always try to borrow books from the Smyrna Public Library instead of buying them. Second, I subscribed to the Kindle Unlimited service through Amazon so that I can download books without paying for each and every one of them. Finally, I got an Audible subscription so that I always have an audio book downloaded on my phone and ready for my commute. And last but not least, I have an immense shelf full of every book anyone could ever hope to read. (The problem is, I tend to buy books that are heavy, both in subject matter and weight. Of the something like 500 books that I have at home, only 8 of them are under 300 pages. Sheesh... thanks, Past Self, you screwed me.)

I read about two hours a day in an effort to achieve this goal, and that's already no joke. If I wake up early enough, I read for fifteen to twenty minutes in the morning. I read through my lunch break (a half hour) and read while my boyfriend is watching TV in the evening (another half hour) and then another fifteen to twenty minutes before bed. I have my Kindle or my smart phone with me everywhere I go, so I can whip one of them out if I have to wait twenty minutes at the nail salon or in line at the bank. I still feel like I need to step it up.

It's also making it more obvious to me that people who "don't have time to read" simply don't make time to read. If I can do it, so can you.