23rd April " World Book Day"

By celebrating this Day throughout the world, UNESCO seeks to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright.  

• 23 April: a symbolic date for world literature for on this date and in the same year of 1616, Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. 

•  It was a natural choice for UNESCO's General Conference to pay a world-wide tribute to books and authors on this date, encouraging everyone, and in particular young people, to discover the pleasure of reading and gain a renewed respect for the irreplaceable contributions of those who have furthered the social and cultural progress of humanity.  

There is good evidence to suggest that young people who read for pleasure daily perform better in reading skills than those who never do .Read more

  

• The idea for this celebration originated in Catalonia where on 23 April, Saint George's Day, a rose is traditionally given as a gift for each book sold. 

• The success of the World Book and Copyright Day will depend primarily on the support received from all parties concerned (authors, publishers, teachers, librarians, public and private institutions, humanitarian NGOs and the mass media), who have been mobilized in each country by UNESCO National Commissions, UNESCO Clubs, Centres and Associations, Associated Schools and Libraries, and by all those who feel motivated to work together in this world celebration of books and authors. 

• The year 2012 also marks the 80th anniversary of the IndexTranslationum.

• This international bibliography of translation provides a unique tool for the monitoring of translation flows in the world.

• Consequently, UNESCO suggests that the activities organized in conjunction with this year’s World Book and Copyright Day focus on the themes of books and translation. 

So let´s start reading a book for pleasure.

Here you have some of my suggestions

Click here                                                                                                                

Harper Lee: American writer,famous for her race relations novel "To kill a mockingbird",which was awarded the Pullizer Prize in 1961and was adapted into a film in 1962 .

Charlotte Brontë´s Jane Eyre opens with Jane, an orphaned, isolated ten-year-old, living with a family that dislikes her. She grows in strength, excels at school, becomes a governess, and falls in love with Edward Rochester. After being deceived by him, Jane goes to Marsh End, where she regains her spirituality and discovers her own strength. By novel's end, Jane is a strong, independent woman. Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre still raises relevant questions to readers today.      

  
John Edward Williams (August 29, 1922 - March 3, 1994) was an American author, editor and professor. He was best known for his novels Stoner (1965). William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage...more

Watch this video

Happy World Book Day!  Joe Dunthorne, Owen Sheers and Laura Dockrill, to celebrate the day,  hit the streets of London to find out what people are reading and why they need to keep young people's noses in books. www.worldbookday.com