If on April 23 you share a book and a rose with a friend or loved one, you will be participating in a long-standing tradition dating back at least 100 years.
Local bookstores, including Anderson’s Bookshop, will celebrate World Book Night, which, according to Anderson’s, has ties to the anniversary of Cervantes’ death and also Shakespeare’s birth and death. The date was declared International Day of the Book by UNESCO.
Anderson’s Bookshops in Naperville and Downers Grove will be participating in the special event and is one of 12 bookstores nationwide offering customers a free rose with the purchase of a World Book Night book pick, according to the bookseller.
“We hope the tradition spreads next year, as does the central theme of World Book Night: books, reading, giving, and community,” Anderson’s said.
In the US, more than 25,000 World Book Night volunteers in 6,200 towns will be distributing 500,000 free books to new or light readers, according to Anderson’s.
Learn more about World Book Night.
The 30 World Book Night U.S. titles for 2013, alphabetical by author, are:
- The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (Anchor Books/Random House)
- City of Thieves, David Benioff (Plume/Penguin Group (USA))
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (Simon & Schuster Paperbacks)
- My Antonia, Willa Cather (Dover)
- Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier (Plume/Penguin Group (USA))
- The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (Vintage/Random House)
- La casa en Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros; translated by Elena Poniatowska (Vintage Español/Random House)
- The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (HarperOne/HarperCollins)
- El Alquimista, Paulo Coelho (Rayo/HarperCollins)
- The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh (Ballantine Books/Random House)
- The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
- Bossypants, Tina Fey (Reagan Arthur/Back Bay Books)
- Good Omens, Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (William Morrow Paperbacks/HarperCollins)
- Still Alice, Lisa Genova (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster)
- Looking for Alaska, John Green (Speak/Penguin Group (USA))
- Playing for Pizza, John Grisham (Bantam/Random House)
- Mudbound, Hillary Jordan (Algonquin Books/Workman Publishing)
- The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster; illus. by Jules Feiffer (Yearling/Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers)
- Moneyball, Michael Lewis (W. W. Norton)