New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/24/2012 -- One of the most popular pastimes anywhere in our shared world is reading. Reading can be a source of education, escape or edification. With all the distractions of the modern world reading is under threat. Television, the internet, video games, celebrity magazines, newspapers, mobile gaming, social networking all compete against books for our time and attention.

The irony is that in our modern electronic age we are all reading more, but most of what we read has mostly no substance and serves to do no more than distract us at a superficial level. World Reading Day seeks to raise awareness of this issue and challenges people to change their behavior, if only for one day.

World Reading Day inspires people to read something more substantial than the usual trivial fare and to indulge and lose themselves in a book instead. Once read a book never leaves you but rather becomes part of you, its stories become your stories, its characters become part of your character and its wisdoms and insights add to your being. It has been said that we are the sum of what we experience and read so the more we read the more we become.

On World Reading Day people are encouraged, if only for one day, to turn off their TV, put down their video games logoff their social networks and avoid all the other myriad distractions of modern life and to read a book instead. Reading events and book clubs are also held where people are encouraged to meet up, share details of their favorite books, swap books they have read with others and read together.

World Reading Day is more than just a one day yearly event, it seeks to celebrate and promote literacy with partner organizations throughout the world throughout the year. It also runs a number of initiatives including its ‘Gift a Book’ scheme, where it encourages people to give a book as either a main or a supplemental present for people of all ages. World Reading Day also encourages cafes to join its ‘book swap’ club where the café provides a bookshelf where patrons can leave books they have read and in return, take free of charge a book that someone else has left.

World Reading Day is held on the first Wednesday of October each year throughout the world and is being celebrated this year on Wednesday the 3rd of October 2012.

About World Reading Day
World Reading Day is one day, held once a year, where people of all ages are, if only for one day, encouraged to turn off the TV, logoff the net, put away the video games & ignore all the other myriad distractions of modern life and enjoy the simple pleasure of reading a book instead. World Reading Day is held on the first Wednesday of October every year and in 2012 is being celebrating on Wednesday the 3rd of October.