World Book Night 2021

 

World Book Night 2021

I can't believe that World Book Night is 10 years old - time really does speed up as you get older. Back then I set myself the challenge of reading all the books that were to be given out before the big day.

Unlike so many reading challenges I set myself this was one that I actually managed to finish, mostly - I still have to go back to A Fine Balance and actually finish it! It also helped me to find one of the best books I've ever read - Half  of a Yellow Sun.

I've dipped in and out of WBN since the first one, both reading books and running events, but it seems fitting that to celebrate the 10th anniversary I set myself the challenge of reading all the books again. There's 21 titles that are already available and one new anthology being written specially for the date.

As ever there is a wide mix of styles and genres to read through and a lot of books I'd probably never pick up without a challenge like this. A quick look at the list, and cross referencing to my book journals, shows that I've recently (within the past 3 years) read 3 of the titles and there's one I remember reading a long time ago and look forward to revisiting. I have also read some of the authors before, but not the specifically the book on this list...

A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zaidi (Vintage)

Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers by various authors, edited by Kit de Waal (Unbound)

Ask a Footballer by James Milner (Quercus)

Elevation by Stephen King (Hodder)

Emma by Jane Austen, narrated by Tanya Reynolds (Penguin Random House Audio)

Faking Friends by Jane Fallon (Michael Joseph)

Good Food for Bad Days by Jack Monroe (Pan Macmillan)

“I Will Not Be Erased”: Our Stories About Growing Up as People of Colour by gal-dem (Walker Books)

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare, narrated by David Tennant and Samantha Spiro (BBC Audio)

Pocket Book of Happiness (Trigger Publishing)

Reasons to be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe (Penguin General)

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (Penguin Random House Children’s)

Sunshine and Sweet Peas in Nightingale Square by Heidi Swain (Simon & Schuster)

Stories to Make You Smile by various authors, ed. by Fanny Blake (Simon & Schuster)

Taking Up Space: The Black Girl’s Manifesto for Change by Chelsea Kwakye and Ọrẹ Ogunbiyi (Cornerstone)

The Anxiety Survival Guide by Bridie Gallagher, Sue Knowles and Phoebe McEwan (Jessica Kingsley Publishers)

The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary (Quercus)

The Kindness Method written and narrated by Shahroo Izadi (Pan Macmillan)

To Sir With Love by E.R. Braithwaite (Vintage)

Up in the Attic by Pam Ayres (Ebury)

We Are All Made of Molecules by Susin Nielsen (Andersen Press)

Where Are We Now? by Glenn Patterson (Head of Zeus)

To find out more about the books for 2021 then the World Book Night page is great, here's hoping that the pandemic has receded enough that some events manage to happen...