by Jen Reeder

I’m a book nerd, so April 23 is one of the most exciting days of the year for me. It’s not because it’s the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday (and death – fun fact!) but because it’s the U.S. World Book Night. For the second year in a row, I’ll be joining approximately 25,000 fellow book lovers in distributing half a million free books to strangers across America in the hopes of starting or reigniting a love of reading in adults.

 

Volunteers in the U.K., Ireland and Germany will also be handing out books for World Book Night. Book nerds of the world, unite!

A lot goes into getting 20 free books into the hands of World Book Night “givers,” as we’re called. Authors waive royalties, book manufacturers donate paper and printing time, publishers kick in money to print special World Book Night editions, FedEx donates the cost of shipping books to the libraries and bookstores, book distributor Ingram handles all packing for shipping, and libraries and bookstores like Maria’s Bookshop (love them!) get the word out and act as pickup locations.

All because we love books and want to share our love of reading with others! Can I get a “kumbaya?”

The process of choosing which of the 30 books to give away is fun but painful – there are too many great options across different genres. It becomes a bit of a Sophie’s Choice: do I pick Tina Fey’s Bossypants over Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris? How do you compare Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth or Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court? These are the hard choices that, I find, can only be made with a glass of wine and popcorn.

The other major decision to make on your giver application is where you will give away books. They do not want you keeping the books for yourself and your friends, or – gasp! – selling them on eBay. You have to pledge to give them to “light or nonreaders.” There are lots of programs to get kids reading, so this is the big push to engage adults (I find the statistic that 42 percent of college graduates never read another book upon leaving their institutions of higher learning absolutely terrifying.)

Last year when I interviewed the executive director of World Book Night U.S., Carl Lennertz, he said some of his favorite applications were from the limo driver who was going to give books away on the job, and the surfer who planned to put his books into plastic bags and paddle out into the waves to give them away to other surfers. Stiff competition!

So in 2012, I was obsessed with choosing the right book for the right spot because I didn’t want to be rejected as a giver in the first ever World Book Night U.S. I tried to be strategic, and chose Because of Winn-Dixie, Kate DiCamillo’s terrific children’s book about a life-changing dog named Winn-Dixie, and pledged to distribute it at the dog park. My choice was a bit less practical than some of my fellow Durango givers, who chose indoor locations like the La Plata County Jail and the Boys and Girls Club (it was a blast to meet them all at the party Maria’s hosted for us.)

So I headed to the dog park with 20 copies of Because of Winn-Dixie – in plastic bags, since it had started to drizzle. Ack! I also talked my husband into bringing our Lab mix Rio so that I wouldn’t be a freaky person without a dog in the dog park (yes, I was taking my role very seriously!) I plopped the books on the bench by the entrance and waited. And waited. After 20 minutes went by, a man with a sweet dog approached. My palms started to sweat. Should I just holler at him?

When he got close, I stood up and said, “Hi, it’s World Book Night! To celebrate, I’m giving away free copies of a children’s book about a dog. Would you like a copy?”

Luckily, the man turned out to be renowned Durango photographer Branson Reynolds, who is one of the nicest people in Durango (and that’s saying something). Instead of pretending to not hear me, he got a big smile and said, “I’d love to read it! I’m thinking of writing a children’s book about a dog myself!”

I was off to a good start. At least 10 minutes went by before a teen-aged couple came in with a dog. They looked intimidatingly cool, but the girl turned out to be an avid reader and urged her nonreading boyfriend to take a copy. He’d already gotten Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian from another World Book Night giver about an hour earlier. He looked less than thrilled that his woman was giving him homework, but he also looked like he would do it (his girlfriend was very pretty). Over the next hour or so, I gave away most of my books, and when it started getting dark, left the last few with my pals at Healthy Hounds and Fat Cats to give away at the register. Then, like a typical American, I bragged about my exciting experience on Facebook (and garnered fewer “likes” than many of my friends receive for posting what they’re cooking for dinner).

This year, I’ll be giving away copies of City of Thieves by David Benioff (yes, co-creator of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” – I read it before he was big, I swear!) I pledged to give it away in front of a grocery store – I’ll check with my fellow givers at the pickup party at Maria’s to make sure I don’t infringe on somebody else’s turf. So if you see me or another random Durangoan waving a book at you on Tues., April 23, please don’t run in the other direction because you think we’re trying to sell you something. There aren’t any strings attached to the book – except to read it!