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03/11
World Book Night launched with million book giveaway
Books were handed out by 20,000 volunteers
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One million books, including works by Alan Bennett and John le Carre, have been given away in the UK and Ireland to mark the inaugural World Book Night.
They have been distributed at venues including homeless centres, pubs and hospitals in a bid to boost reading.
Some 20,000 people were asked to pick their favourite from 25 titles and were then given 48 copies to pass on to friends with their recommendation.
BBC Two is screening an evening of special programmes to mark the event.
Organiser Jamie Byng said it had been tough to come up with a shortlist of just 25 books, chosen by a committee of booksellers, librarians and broadcasters.
“We wanted to created a really balanced list that had things on it that would appeal to everyone,” he told the BBC.
The idea has had widespread support from authors, although some independent booksellers have raised concerns the event could damage future sales.
World Book Night organiser Jamie Byng said the shortlist had ”a real range that would appeal to readers all over the country”
Writer Philip Pullman, whose book Northern Lights is among those being given away, told the BBC he was “thrilled” by the event.
“It’s a wonderful idea,” he said. “It’s a very original and yet it seems so obvious. Give books to people and they enjoy them and go and buy more books.”
Asked which book he would particularly recommend, he said the Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.
Analysis
Will Gompertz BBC News arts editor
The title, World Book Night, is an accurate description of the organisers’ ambition for their new venture.
It’s a promotional event which started in Britain on Saturday but by next year they hope will spread around the world. If the reaction of those I saw at the Mitchell Library in Glasgow on Saturday night was a reliable preface to a bigger story the organisers should be optimistic. Authors and readers were united in their support of the event. Neither were concerned that by giving one million books away for free would damage future sales.
I talked to the writers Sarah Waters and Mark Billingham, both of whom thought the concept would increase book sales, not diminish them. I asked them what books they would choose to give away to their closest friends. They replied Jane Eyre and Sherlock Holmes respectively.
But if this year’s shortlist of 25 novels is a sign of future selections neither of their chosen books would make the cut. That is because they are both out of copyright – and this is an initiative predicated on publishers encouraging the public to sample authors whose rights they own.
“It’s a wonderful book. Everybody should read that.”
The BBC Two schedule includes three Culture Show Specials and a premiere of BBC Films’ adaptation of Brideshead Revisited.
Live broadcasts from World Book Night events in Glasgow, Manchester and London will be broadcast in between the TV programmes.
Library closures On Friday some of the most celebrated artists from stage, screen, literature and art took part in a launch event compered by Graham Norton in London’s Trafalgar Square.
Margaret Atwood, Alan Bennett and Nick Cave were just some of the names that participated.
Talking Heads writer Bennett drew applause from the crowd when he criticised library closures, calling it tantamount to child abuse, according to the BBC’s art correspondent David Sillito
The author said that as a child he had been taken to libraries when he had not had books himself.
Author Edna O’Brien, who also gave a reading to the thousands who gathered there, said it had felt “like the big time”.
“Musicians draw great crowds, but usually authors don’t,” she said, adding she thought the event would “revive interest in reading”.
She warned: “If young people stopped reading banality would spread like a plague.”