Joyce Wallace Advocacy Matters- Development Worker
World Book Night is coming up this Friday! #WorldBookNight
We’re excited to join the celebrations for 10th anniversary of World Book Night in 2021. In association with Specsavers.
Our organisation is one of over 700 taking part in this year’s giveaway, with 100,000 books being given out by organisations across the UK and Ireland. We are sharing our books with vulnerable people we support and have begun giving these out.
This year’s theme is ‘Books to Make You Smile’, The Reading Agency have made a list of books that we believe will make everyone smile.
Find out more about the books at www.worldbooknight.org
Our staff and volunteers have recommended some of the books they love:
Lux the Poet by Martin Millar- it’s quirky, left-field, laugh-out-loud funny on occasion and highly unusual!
Only Forward – Micheal Marshall Smith
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez- it’s mystical, magical and intriguing
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
Stephen King – Misery
Perfume- Patrick Suskind
The Queen and I- Sue Townsend
A Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole
What is World Book Night?
World Book Night is the annual celebration of books and reading. People from all backgrounds are brought together for one reason – to inspire others to read more.
The best part about it is that everyone can get involved! Whether you read a lot or don’t know when you last picked a book up, you can join in the celebration in so many different ways.
If you can join the #ReadingHour from 7-8pm on 23 April take a picture and post. The aim of #ReadingHour is to encourage everyone to set aside time to dedicate to reading. This could be reading alone, reading to children at bedtime or listening to an audiobook as you prepare you dinner.
Why is World Book Night important?
World Book Night is run by The Reading Agency, a UK-wide charity that tackles life’s big challenges through the proven power of reading. In England, 31% of adults don’t read for pleasure, rising to 46% of young people (aged 16 to 24). We know that reading for pleasure is linked to fewer feelings of stress and depression, better sleeping patterns and improved literacy.
As well as celebrating reading, we work with publishers to donate books to organisations across the country, including prisons, colleges, hospitals, care homes and homeless shelters, and many more. These organisations reach non-readers and those who don’t have access to books. Since the first World Book Night celebration in 2011, we have given out almost 3 million books. We believe that everyone can participate in World Book Night, and for many this book will start their reading journey.
How to celebrate
There are so many different ways that you can celebrate World Book Night!
We’ve provided some ideas here, but you can do anything you want to celebrate books. We love seeing how people are celebrating World Book Night, so make sure you post photos on social media using #WorldBookNight.
- Sort through your own books. If there are any that you don’t want to keep, pass them onto others, or donate them to a charity shop
- Hold a virtual party Who doesn’t love a book-themed event? We think that World Book Night is the perfect time to throw a party, and it doesn’t have to be at night! Even if you’re not able to bring your guests together in-person, there are lots of ways you can celebrate:
- Ask everyone who joins to share their top book recommendation
- Ask all your guests to dress up as their favourite characters from books
- Organise a murder mystery and find out if any of your guests are better than Miss Marple or Poirot
- If any of your guests are budding writers, ask them to bring an extract of their work along for a storytelling session
- Everyone loves a pub quiz, so host a virtual quiz night, with some special bookish rounds
Drop Everything And Read
Reading has huge benefits for health and wellbeing, with studies showing that adults who read for just 30 minutes a week are 20% more likely to report great life satisfaction. Why not introduce DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) to your organisation or workplace? Set aside 30 minutes each week for to spend reading.
Social media
There will be lots happening on The Reading Agency and World Book Night social media on 23 April. Tag them in your posts using @WorldBookNight, @readingagency and #WorldBookNight. We’d love to see what you’re doing!