Happy Book Day

Happy World Book Day.

I just, less than five minutes ago, learned that yesterday was World Book Day. From Wikipedia: “World Book Day, also known as World Book and Copyright Day, or International Day of the Book, is an annual event organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to promote reading, publishing, and copyright. World Book Day was first celebrated on 23 April 1995, and continues to be recognized on that day.”

Personally, I like the name World Book Day. Or even just Book Day. International Day of the Book makes me think of George Romero’s Day of the Dead. Not that that’s a bad thing because zombie movies (except for Zombie Honeymoon and a few others) are, for the most part, good, but books and zombies don’t really mix. I take that back because there are some good zombie books out there like Bijou of the Dead by Robert Freese. (Sadly, this book is out of print now and unavailable as an ebook but used copies appear to be available)

Anyway, to get back to the point that I never had to begin with, yesterday was World Book Day and I just learned about it less than five minutes ago, well, closer to 10 minutes now, and I think it’s a cool day and happy World Book Day to you. And coincidentally I bought a book yesterday, too. I bought Fantastic Stories Presents: Science Fiction Super Pack #1. It’s a Kindle book jam packed with 38 Sci-fi short stories for only $1.12. The stories are all in the public domain so you can probably gather them up online for free and save the $1.12 if you want, but if you want the comfort of having all of them with you at all times, along with a table of contents that works, it’s pretty much a bargain. I wonder though why it’s $1.12 instead of $1.10 or $1.15 and why there are 38 stories instead of 35 or 40? And not to nitpick, but shouldn’t something that’s called a “Super Pack” have like 100 stories in it? Or maybe 100 stories would be a “Mega Pack”? Even so, 38 stories, while a lot, doesn’t fall under the “Super” designation in my book. Come to think of it, maybe that’s the wrong idiom because there actually are 38 stories in “my” book. Although it’s technically not really “my” book since I didn’t write it. Maybe purchasing a book constitutes ownership? Or maybe you might not really think of it at all.

So that’s it. To summarize: It was World Book Day. I didn’t know it was World Book Day. I bought a book not knowing it was World Book Day. I questioned the marketing behind the book I bought. I implied that maybe purchase equals ownership. Bijou of the Dead is a good zombie book if you can find it.

If you’ve made it this far enjoy your Wednesday and happy belated World Book Day.