World Book Night

or...spreading the joy of books!

As a library assistant I heard of World Book Night last year and was involved in distributing boxes of books to 'givers'. This year, with me being off work on maternity leave, I decided to sign up to be a giver myself.

Looking through this year's 25 chosen books the one I wanted to share immediately jumped out at me - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I read this a couple of years ago after it was recommended to me by a colleague. It's a bit strange as it's written from the perspective of Death, but is awesome, and I'm looking forward to reading it again.

The idea of WBN is that 20,000 readers across the UK give out 24 copies of their chosen book to people in their community, to encourage those who don't read regularly to fall in love with reading.

I adore books and reading, but since having Ryan finding the time to myself to just curl up with a cup of tea and a book is very difficult. In the first few months after his birth I went from reading on average two books a week, to reading about two in four months! (Although, to be fair, I did read a lot of baby related books which I don't really count as books I've read, if that makes sense!)

Because of this I thought it would be good to share my books with other parents who are probably in the same boat as me. I also decided to share some of my books with fellow ladies who enjoy my other favourite hobby - netball.

I picked my books up from Nantwich Library the week before WBN, and it was like Christmas for me, opening a big box full of lovely fresh books, and I couldn't wait to start handing them out and chatting about them.

My first target - parents! I volunteer at Nantwich Baby Group, so I sent out a message in our weekly 'What's On' email advising members that I had free books to hand out. It was a big success, nearly every parent / grandparent who joined us that morning took a copy home with them, and I had some lovely chats about the book, which led on to talking about other books people have read. I was right that many mums especially don't get time to read often anymore, and had one person tell me the only chance they get to read away from the kids is in the bath!

Target number two - netballers! I am a member of Ladyhawks Netball Club in Crewe, so put up a message on facebook to let them all know about WBN, and that I'd be bringing my books to our training session. This was very popular, and I didn't have enough books left for everyone who wanted to try one! They were all happy with the idea that once they've read it they were to pass it on, and I can't wait to start tracking my books to see where they end up!

Even though it's part of my job, I'm often a bit apprehensive about recommending a book, in case the reader doesn't like it and blames me! The Book Thief is a bit strange, and possible not to everyone's taste, so it reassured me that one of my netball friends put a comment up on facebook to say that she's read it before and loved it too! Here's hoping all the other recipients of my books enjoy it as much as we did.