Celebrating World Book Day

Many thanks to Dorothee, who is participating in the 2012 Global Reading Challenge, for the reminder that today is World Book Day.

World Book and Copyright Day (also known as International Day of the Book or World Book Days) is a yearly event on 23 April, organized by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and copyright. The Day was first celebrated in 1995.
The official theme for World Book Day 2012 is: “Books and Translation”.
The year 2012 also marks the 80th anniversary of the Index Translationum. This international bibliography of translation provides a unique tool for the monitoring of translation flows in the world. UNESCO will celebrate this anniversary by organizing a debate on this instrument. 

Dorothee's own celebratory post is here.


In a sense, in the Global Reading Challenge, we observe World Book Day all year round, as well as reading many books in translation.

This year's GRC challenges readers to expand their reading horizons, choosing a level of the challenge to suit themselves: 7, 14, or 21 books from 6 continents and a theme of their own choice.

39 participants have signed up for the challenge to date, and new reading recommendations are constantly being added.

BTW, here is a book giveaway running on It's a crime (or a mystery)

Don't Tell Me Covers Don't Count

I'm not sure how some people select a book. We don't all go to a bookshop or library with a list, but I have heard some people say they are influenced by neither the cover of the book, nor the blurb on the back. In fact they seriously avoid looking at either.

Today I came across a seriously interesting set of covers. It started off with a post from Karen at EuroCrime about World Book Day.

World Book Day is the biggest annual celebration of books and reading in the UK and Ireland. The World Book Day team asked publishers large and small to submit books they thought deserved to reach a wider readership – most specifically those that would make good subjects for discussion, those that don’t merely entertain, but give greater food for thought.

The result is a long list of 50 books, only 2 of them from the crime fiction genre, and neither of which I've read. But what struck me as I looked at the list was what an interesting set of covers they are. It's a bit like a beauty queen pageant really. I know the old saying, "you shouldn't/can't judge a book by its cover", but the cover really does play a large part in our assessment of the potential of the book, doesn't it? Most of these covers appear to tell you quite a bit about the book inside.

When you visit the site, have a look at some of the other clever things it does. Click on one of the covers. A panel drops down and you get the beginning of a blurb about the book, and also the beginning of the latest comment by a logged in user. Over in the left hand margin, there is a "selector" where you can choose the books according to category: there are 37 fiction books, 13 non-fiction, 35 books set in "other places", 19 set in "other times", and 15 categorised as "other views".
On the right hand side there is a changing parade of book covers and an invitation to register, leave a comment, and vote.
There's also a feature, a tab that says See The books, that gives you a random selection from the 50 books.
As I said, a very clever site, with lots of features designed to make you spend a lot of time there.

The drawback for me is that you have to create a login to leave a comment on any of the books, or to vote. You'd think with all that other cleverness they might have worked out a way to make that a simpler process than me having to leave my digital footprint yet again.

Karen says: Voting on the long list will end on 2nd January 2009. A short list of ten titles will be announced on 30th January 2009 and voting will recommence. The winner will be announced on World Book Day.

So let's try to remember World Book Day, 6 March 2009. If you are interested in what won in 2008, there is a post here, but I didn't actually find the results very conclusive, although there obviously was a winner. In the voting in 2008 there were 100 books, and there is an archive available. Perhaps providing only 50 in the longlist will polarise the votes a bit more.

Follow Up - Books to Talk About - Final votes

A month ago I drew your attention to this UK/Irish World Book Day happening on March 6.

Spread the Word: Books to Talk About is a British/Irish campaign to help people discover books they might not otherwise have considered reading. There were100 books in the original list. 90 of the titles have now been discarded and 10 remain as a shortlist. Anyway, now the short list of 10 has been announced and here are the titles.
I have ** those I would expect to find on crime shelves in a bookshop, although none of them are categorised as crime fiction.

The final voting has been completed and here are the results (not that the results look at all conclusive to me):

21% - ** Boy A by Jonathan Trigell
14% - Ishq and Mushq by Priya Basil
12% - Salt & Honey by Candi Miller
10% - Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
9% - Speaking of Love by Angela Young
8% - ** Death of a Murderer by Rupert Thomson
8% - ** In Cold Daylight by Pauline Rowson
7% - ** Playing with the Moon by Eliza Graham
6% - Lint by Steve Aylett
5% - Before I Die by Jenny Downham

Books to Talk About - World Book Day

World Book Day is March 6.
Spread the Word: Books to Talk About is a British/Irish campaign to help people discover books they might not otherwise have considered reading. There were100 books in the original list. 90 of the titles have now been discarded and 10 remain as a shortlist. The original 100 were a very interesting list, but the books were not always categorised in the genre I would have expected to find them in, with a number of crime books categorised under thriller for example.

Anyway, now the short list of 10 has been announced and here are the titles.
I have ** those I would expect to find on crime shelves in a bookshop, although none of them are categorised as crime fiction.

Ishq and Mushq by Priya Basil
Salt & Honey by Candi Miller
Before I Die by Jenny Downham
Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
Lint by Steve Aylett
Speaking of Love by Angela Young
** In Cold Daylight by Pauline Rowson
** Playing with the Moon by Eliza Graham
** Boy A by Jonathan Trigell
** Death of a Murderer by Rupert Thomson

In order to comment or vote on the books you need to register http://www.worldbookday.com/spreadtheword/books/book_top-ten.asp so that is probably something I won't do, but I'll certainly be interested in the results of the voting. Must put World Book Day in my diary too.