Reading into that good night

New York —
 
Call me an old curmudgeon, but it seems to me that the only way the description World Book Day would make any sense would be if, in some way, the world was brought together by a book — preferably on the same day.
 
But for that to happen, J.K. Rowling would have to produce an unexpected eighth volume in the Harry Potter series — Harry Potter and the Tyranny of Expectation, perhaps — when in fact, from what one hears, she plans to enter the murky world of Ian Rankin and Edinburgh noir.
 
So we shouldn’t get our hopes up. Even if we could wave a magic wand (by Olivanders of Diagon Alley, naturally) and conjure up an octavian tale from She Who Can No Longer be Named in the boardroom of Bloomsbury, the result would have nothing to do with World Book Day.
 
For a start, the ‘celebration’ of children’s literature that takes place today under the rubric World Book Day is confined to the UK and Ireland. According to UNESCO, from whose benevolent bureaucracy the idea sprang, the occasion is marked elsewhere on April 23, the date on which it is said that Cervantes and Shakespeare* breathed their last.
 
Sadly, like that other UN concept, world peace, the day is an idea whose time has not yet quite come. From what I can discover, the event worldwide provides filler material rather than headlines. In Spain they hold a Cervantathon; in France expat Brits meet over packets of McVitie’s to proclaim their love of Rumpole of the Bailey. In Sweden, Världsbokdagen is shifted around so that it doesn’t clash with Easter. Other than that, it seems to be honoured, as Shakespeare might have remarked, more in the breach than in the observance.
 
Realising, perhaps, that free book tokens and ‘resource packages’ for children, however worthy, lacked something in oomph, the overlords of the British book world decided last year to add a new dimension. World Book Night, for adults only, was the result. In the U.S., bookies immediately gambled on this temporal extension and have since been joined by the Bücherfreunde of Germany.
 
Beginning as darkness falls on April 23, ‘reluctant adult readers’ throughout America will be ruthlessly sought out, ‘wherever they are,’ in towns and cities, in public settings, in nursing homes and food pantries, in low income schools and railway stations.
 
Nowhere, it seems, will be safe from well-intentioned, book-laden creatures of the night, whose individual goal will be to give away 30 copies each of specially-produced, not-for-resale paperbacks ‘in safe, well-populated public areas or indoor settings, like hospitals or schools’.
 
Given how few young Americans these days read for pleasure, it is unlikely that a one-day, or one-night, giveaway will be a major harbinger of change. The latest generation of smart-phones are light on text and heavy on speech. Talking phones — devices that recognise their owners and keep track of their interests — are the newest fad, as antithetic to the traditional book as the Big Mac is to haute cuisine.

Perhaps, though, we should count our blessings. Better an audio book than no book at all.

Ten years from now, when the Great Terror phase of the publishing revolution has given way to a more settled dispensation, it is likely that things will be done differently. On the stroke of midnight on April 23, 2022, a million donated talking books will, one imagines, appear on the Kindles, iPads and Nooks of the not-quite-dispossessed, where they will vie with the movies, video games, 3D porn and social media not yet conceived but unquestionably in prospect.

Until that blissful day, we must hope that World Book Night gives way to a new dawn of civilised reading. This year’s U.S. Book Night list is nothing if not eclectic. It includes I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Mary Angelou); Kindred (Octavia Butler); Bloodwork (Michael Connelly); Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) and The Stand (Stephen King). Wish them luck.

* Shakespeare not only died on April 23; he may also have been born on that date. I was reminded of this by a letter I once read in Viz in which the writer expressed his astonishment that the Bard “wrote all them plays in a single day”. Quite so.