E-books/audiobooks review: non-fiction

Guns

by Stephen King

Philtrum Press

(e-book)

Stephen King has an important message but he's preaching to the converted. In this Kindle Single the novelist eschews fictional horror to tackle something even scarier: gun rage in the US. His efforts stem not just from the now regular news of innocent students, moviegoers, and shoppers killed in that country by someone going postal. He also wants to explain why he pulled from circulation Rage, one of his early novels published under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. That book, linked to at least four teenage urban terrorists, was removed because, he says, "You don't leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay their hands on it." Applauding recent initiatives to curb gun violence, he says that while background checks will probably happen, less likely is the proposed ban on sales of assault weapons. To show how laws can effect change, King points to Australia, where in 1996 the government banned or restricted automatic weapons. That reduced the country's private firepower by 20 per cent. But try reasoning with gun lobby the NRA.

Epic Fail

by Mark O'Connell

The Millions

(e-book)

What defines an "epic fail"? If you don't know you risk having your work fall into this category of delicious disasters - and that may bring you infamy of the kind experienced by the elderly Spanish woman who suddenly won worldwide renown for "restoring" a 19th-century fresco called Ecce Homo (Behold the Man). So botched was her attempt that the artwork is now better known as the "Monkey Jesus" for its simian likeness. That she had the best intentions makes the episode even funnier. Why? And what does it say about us? Mark O'Connell has spent time pondering this form of schadenfreude that comes when "immunity to self-doubt" produces masterpieces in travesty. Technology has only fed our delight in artistic epic fails in such areas as music, literature and movies, although, as he shows with examples from history, sublime missteps have always been with us. But in laughing at others do we risk neglecting that we ourselves might be idiots? O'Connell's observations are spot on and should provoke self-questioning. Beware if it doesn't.