The International Day Of The Book

Statistics say that one out of five Romanians does not read at all, and only 2.8% of us read a book every month. It is discouraging how little to Romanians actually read. Books stimulate your imagination, help you relax, fall asleep, and these are only a few of the benefits of reading.

They say you have as many lives as the number of the books you read.

There were so many things that were said about books and reading, but nothing seems to truly reflect the value of a book. I recently started reading the book “Happy people read and drink coffee”. Although the main subject of the book is not reading nor drinking coffee, the title is one that sends us to a truth that should be generally true (although I am not much of a coffe drinker).

World wide there were many initiatives for supporting reading, and among the most important is The International Day of the Book. Since 23 years ago, UNESCO had the initiative to celebrate the book and the lecture on the 23rd of April worldwide. 23rd of April is a symbolic date for the world literature: this day, in 1616, Cervantes and Shakespeare were leaving this world. Actually, today’s celebration started in Catalonia, where the commemoration of the death of Cervantes was associated by the librarians with the traditional day of Sand Jordi (Saint George), also know as “Rose Day”, during which small gifts are given. This way, on the 23rd of April in Spain, a rose is given for every book bought.

“The international book and copyright day” is an anual event, organized through UNESCO, especially for for promovating reading, publishing, but also author rights.

Why 23rd of Aprli? Because this day we celebrate the birth and death of William Shakespeare (23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616), Vladimir Nabokov  (b.3 April 1899), Manuel Mejía Vallejo (b. 23 Aprili 1923). Also on the 23rd of April died the Peruvian writer Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, the English William Wordworth and the French Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly.

In Romania, this celebration has a more special significance. Besides the celebration of the book, we also celebrate the day of the librarian, the man who is in love with books and is spending his entire life among them.

Here, there are many ways to celebrate. A beautiful gesture was made by “Dacia Automotive” who offered 1400 books to the students of the Mioveni schools.

Also we should mention the initiative of Carturesti team which, in order to promovate reading, offered to the clients the possibility to receive a free book for spending a short period of time reading in the shop. A good initiative in my point of view and which I hope to be adopted by as many libraries as possible.

Finally, I would like to mention the fact that I encourage reading and I will give any book I read to a man who really wants to read  but does not have possibilities. Together we can  be united for changing the statistics in Romania and en-light people  who do not have the necessary resources to do that.

© picnicontheshelf, April 22, 2018