The literary world is in the midst of a bold renaissance—or at least a spirited lurch. Traditional readership continues its noble decline, particularly among men (who, research confirms, might read... instructions for chainsaws but only for troubleshooting). However, innovative efforts are underway to rekindle the flame of bookish affection.
Take, for instance, the widely celebrated Book Buzz initiative, a campaign initially aimed at encouraging women to rekindle their reading habits. While the program's marketing is tasteful, the products themselves are not so much books as vibrating portals to personal renewal. Yes, we mean vibrating. Mechanically. Electrically. They whir at settings ranging from “Literary Flirtation” to “Brontë Blast.”
Publishers have been tight-lipped about why these books are so wildly popular with women. The official line is “ergonomic spine alignment,” but field reports indicate that women now understand precisely what they mean when they say they want to “curl up with a good book.” TSA officials report record sightings of mauve and pink paperbacks in carry-ons, lovingly packed beside charger cables and knowing grins. Social media is awash with captions like “Just me and my boyfriend (he’s 300 pages with no stop).” Book clubs have begun to feature glowsticks and faint moaning. Frankly, nobody’s mad.
This article, however, is not about women’s books. It is about books by and for men. And why they are suddenly flying off the shelves—often at 200 miles per hour, toward the open sky, in front of a camouflaged man yelling “PULL!”
Enter: The Read & Reload Literacy Initiative. Developed in collaboration with The American Shotgun Federation and something called the Northwest Flannel Council, this campaign aims to rebrand books for men not as vessels of introspection but as targets.
“Look, we tried everything,” admitted campaign director Sheila Grant, Deputy Director of Rural Literacy Tactics. “Podcasts. Books about trucks. Books shaped like trucks. A 700-page novel titled Diesel Grudge. Nothing. But then one guy used a copy of Moby-Dick to prop open a chicken coop and said, ‘This'd make a fine puck.’ That’s when the lightbulb went off—or technically, the propane lantern.”
Under the new program, enthusiasts recover classic novels neglected in used bookstores and judge them by heft and aerodynamics for skeet shooting. Presumably the page falls open by accident at some point so men will accidentally read a few lines, but that aside, the point is to pulverize Middlemarch with, say, a 12-gauge Beretta Silver Pigeon. It creates a bond.
The shooting styles vary:
Side-by-side purists savor the thrill of taking down Anna Karenina with both barrels—just like Tolstoy intended.
Over-and-under shooters prefer a warning shot to Great Expectations, followed by reducing David Copperfield to Dickensian confetti.
Pump-action guys like to pause after a chapter, nod solemnly, and then blow the protagonist out of the sky—twice.
Single-shot classics won the day. How? A particularly literary militia group has restored a 1901 four-man duck cannon, previously outlawed for its role in the extinction of the carrier pigeon. It’s legal as long as it’s registered and pointed safely at a book. One squeeze of the trigger sends Ulysses, The Brothers Karamazov, East of Eden, and Catch-22 into confetti—we were all eating hot dogs by the time the last bit reached the ground.
The scent of a book after reading is metallic, sulfurous, and slightly acrid, like a mix between fireworks and hot pennies—and dog breath. Pointers love fetching the shot-up books. Good Boy!
Naturally, there has been some controversy.
“I don’t think we should be encouraging people to shoot at books,” said a former librarian, Georgette Davis. “Although I must admit, the sound is impressive.” A sympathetic fellow subdued her—first with a shot of whiskey, then a cold one, then a .410 single shot. He smiled, loaded The Little Prince into his hand thrower, and said, “It’s only ninety pages. You can only miss once.”
She’s now a weekly regular. She shows up early, leaves late, and owns a pink camo Browning Citori 725 Feather—20 gauge, over-under, walnut heart, Barbie soul.
“I used to file books by Dewey,” she says, loading The Awakening into the thrower. “Now I free them.”
The data, however, is promising. Remember: the lower the number, the larger the bore. Men are buying books in record numbers, along with skeet throwers, shells of all gauges, and coolers. Some are even reading the blurbs. A few have discovered marginalia, which they assume is a martial art.
“I carry extra copies of The Brothers Karamazov in my truck,” said participant Gordo "Mallard" Ferris. “Haven’t read it. Don’t need to. It has mass. Three of them balance on my cupholder and when the time comes, buddy, I wind up my trap machine, and it flies.”
The true genius of the campaign lies in its layering: books are simultaneously status objects, projectiles, conversation pieces, and literary talismans. As one campaign ad puts it:
“Books. They’re like ducks. Except you don’t feel bad when they go down.”
Unlike ducks, the shooters can’t eat these pigeons. Meanwhile, men are discovering the small joys of holding books. Stroking the cover, breathing in the faint aroma of scorched stock varnish or singed oil from the heated barrel it’s laying on. It’s woodsy. It’s American. It’s a way of life. You want to take a novel away from one of these citizens? Sure, maybe you can, Communist—from their cold, dead hands.
Occasionally flipping to a random page, snorting at a metaphor, and whispering, “Damn, that’s clean.” Some have even begun posting selfies with novels under the hashtag #GlockandPlot, featuring tactically venerated works like Blood Meridian and Call of the Wild (Field Edition).
Back at the Read & Reload ranch, one volunteer has quietly begun a book recovery program, gathering those copies that are shot near but not through, patching them with duct tape, and leaving them around picnic tables, deer blinds, and tackle boxes. He calls it “literature rewilding.”
Will these books ever be read? Hard to say. But for now, they’re being carried. Admired. Occasionally kissed for luck. And on rare occasions—when the light is just right and nobody’s looking—actually opened.
In flight, sometimes, the book’s cover spreads like wings and flutters—a strange, papery grace. For a moment, it’s not just literature, it’s lift.
It’s a beautiful thing to have in your sights and—KABLAMO!
Remember: when “reading,” wear your earplugs.
It’s quite something to see the affection these men have for novels now. Perhaps the best way to get a man to hold a literary book… is to let him hunt it, trace the plot of its trajectory, and pepper that plot full of holes. But not too much. You don’t want to give the taxidermist a hard time mounting it above the library couch. Between the antlers and the fishing map.
Maybe the best way to bring men back to books… is to let them hold something worth aiming at.
And maybe—just maybe—not pull the trigger every time. Most of the time, sure.