A SENIOR lecturer at the University of Chester is hoping to pass on her love of books to residents by hosting a major book event in March.
Dr Emma Rees, senior lecturer in the university’s Department of English, has been chosen as one of 20,000 volunteers nationwide to help spread the word at the first ever World Book Night in March.
This extraordinary venture sees the Publishers’ Association, the Booksellers’ Association, the Independent Publishers’ Guild, the Reading Agency, libraries, World Book Day and the BBC all working together to arrange for one million books to be distributed – free of charge – to members of the public across the UK and Ireland on March 5.
Dr Rees said: “This is a great opportunity to reach people who haven’t, for whatever reason, read a book for a while.
“Forty-eight people will each be given a free copy of Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith to read at their leisure, and my hope is this astonishing novel – which, incidentally, delivers a phenomenal narrative punch halfway through – will remind them of the sheer joys of reading for pleasure.
“If, in the future, just one of the 48 recipients of the novel switches off their TV or logs off from the internet in order to read instead then the night will have been a great success.”
Having collected her 48 volumes from the Chester campus’s John Smith’s bookshop, Emma will be helped in their distribution by two of the Department’s PhD students, Anna Mackenzie and Louisa Yates.
Following the successful Chester Literature Festival Event, organised by Dr Rees in the Carlton Tavern in Handbridge in October 2010, the books will be given away at the same venue.
Pub landlord Chris Wood said: “Bringing books into the local community is an exciting initiative, and the Carlton Tavern is a perfect spot for a drink and some reading for pleasure.”
