World Book Day 2018

Are you ready for World Book Day? Hmmm, I never heard of it before either, but it will be upon us this Monday, 23 April 2018. I'm all for promoting books, reading, and literacy; they have always been a big part of my life. What makes me especially happy is that Amazon.com is celebrating by offering 9 Kindle books for free! The 8 novels and 1 memoir have all been translated into English, and come from a wide variety of languages. Making this more tantalizing for me is that the books are by authors who are prize winners or best sellers in their native countries. Such a good chance to peek into another culture.

But hurry, these books are only free until 11:59 PM on Tuesday night. The time left is shown at the top of the download page, so check it in your local time zone. Here's the page on Amazon.com to get your free ebooks:

https://www.amazon.com/article/read-the-world

This special day was officially proclaimed in 1995 by UNESCO, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and is celebrated by over 100 countries. Except that the UK celebrates it on the first Thursday in March, apparently to avoid conflicts with Easter and school holidays.

According to the UNESCO web page, the full name is World Book and Copyright Day, and many festivities are planned all around the world. In addition, a World Book Capital is named each year, and that city promotes literacy throughout the year until April 23rd of the next year. Athens is the World Book Capital for 2018.

23 April is a symbolic date for world literature. It is on this date in 1616 that Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors, such as Maurice Druon, Halldór K. Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.
- UN web page

 I am looking forward to reading most of these books, and applying them to the Reading All Around the World Challenge!

Further Reading

* UN: World Book and Copyright Day 23 April
http://www.un.org/en/events/bookday/

* UNESCO: World Book Day
https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldbookday

* In Celebration of World Book Day, AmazonCrossing Aims to Connect One Million Readers with Kindle Books in Translation
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/celebration-world-book-day-amazoncrossing-130000539.html

* World Book Day - a British site for their day, 7 March 2018
https://www.worldbookday.com/

* Read the World: Celebrate World Book Day with AmazonCrossing
https://www.amazon.com/article/read-the-world