Celebrate Books Every Day

Did you know March 1st was World Book Day? Me neither. Maybe that’s because, according to the World Book Day Web site, the organizers “are delighted to be celebrating the 10th Birthday of World Book Day in the UK and Ireland in 2007. Over this relatively short period World Book Day has become firmly established as the biggest annual event promoting the enjoyment of books and reading.”

Since I live in neither Ireland nor the UK, I guess this pretty much leaves me out. But it shouldn’t, since -- you know -- the name has that meaningful “world” in it. And books are something to celebrate.

I’d suggest we all take it over and make it our own (I mean, why should the UK and Ireland get all the fun all the time?), but there’s a snag: World Book Day has some competition from World Book and Copyright Day which, according to Wikipedia, “is a yearly event on 23 April, organised by UNESCO to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright. The Day was first celebrated in 1995.”

And apparently this World Book Day has some claim on the date:

The connection between 23 April and books was first made in 1923 by booksellers in Catalonia as a way to honour the author Miguel de Cervantes who died on that day. This became a part of the celebrations of the Saint George’s Day (also 23 April) in the region, where it has been traditional since the mediaeval era for men to give roses to their lovers and since 1925 for the woman to give a book in exchange. Half the yearly sales of books in Catalonia are at this time with over 400,000 sold and exchanged for over 4 million roses.

Wikipedia (not always the best resource on the planet, but always an interesting one) is clear as mud on the whole World Book Day thing. I gather that some people celebrate World Book Day in April and some celebrate in March and some ... well, there’s probably more we haven’t even heard from yet.

Here’s a thought: maybe all the World Book Day people should get together and decide on a date. It sort of waters the whole thing down if it’s just here and there all willy-nilly.

Or are we meant to take a lesson from this? Maybe we just need to go on the way we’ve been going, celebrating books every day of the year.

I kind of like that idea, myself. Maybe we could settle it with a meeting?