I have a friend who was badgering me to become a part of World Book Night last year, enthusiastically shoving her three chosen Book Night titles into my hand.
I was very reticent, to say the least.
My excuses were:
- As regular readers of this blog will already know, I am mainly a reader of magazines (a habit started when baby giants prohibited the cover to cover reading of any significant volume)
- I have the reticence of a cynic and don’t mind admitting that the cautionary words – ‘this concept seems too good to be true’ sprung to mind
- I am not as prolifically intelligent a literati as said friend. The only books we’ve had in common over the years have been cook books and even then, she’ll be digesting patisserie, whilst I’ll tuck into the entrĂ©es.
Personally
though, the smell and feel of a book knocks the kandle/cuddle e-readers into a
tactile mad hatter’s hat. I don’t mind admitting that the sniff of a crisply
new paperback, transports me back to my own childhood dates with Noddy, the
Famous Five, Tom and his Midnight Garden and a couple of books by Frances
Hodgson Burnett.
Nine
months after my introduction to Harlequin and the White Queen, I could almost
be classified as the Sceptic (ok, that’s meant to be Spy) Who Came in from the
Cold. My curiosity had got the better of
me.
After
my cursory look at the World Book Night site last year, I have revisited -
clicking around the site and being consumed with the dawning realisation that this
really is an amazing idea.
Looking
at the 2014 Book List, I was transported back to the heart-wrenching book fairs
that rolled into my school. They always tempted me with pile after pile of trinket
like books: Charlotte’s Web, Anne of Green Gables, Aesop’s Fables and Just So
Stories; to name but a few of my book lust list.
I knew that the family book buying pot was completely empty though, and my cuddled pile was slowly re-distributed back to its original habitat.
I knew that the family book buying pot was completely empty though, and my cuddled pile was slowly re-distributed back to its original habitat.
All
my ‘wanted books’ memory went back on the travelling bookshop stacks and I
clicked away from the WBN site, a little troubled by my recollection.
But
I felt inspired by The Reading Agency charity’s mission too:
World Book Night is about
giving books and encouraging those who have lost the love of reading – or are
yet to gain it – to pick up a book and read. Line by line, paragraph by
paragraph until they too have discovered the power of reading and the opportunities
in life that reading can open the door to.
So, this week, my Something for the Weekend suggestion is to take a look around the
World Book Night site. Although too late to be a book giver (applications
closed on the 23rd January), there is plenty of time to find out
more before the night itself on the 23rd April.
Finally, I would like to close by saying that I know I am fortunate to have some very good friends, but one
of them in particular is indeed a copiously intelligent bookworm, who has
probably got her wish in the end. She certainly has given me a nudge to pick up my love of books again. How about you?
