world book day!

is not today, but on the 23rd of april. i just found out today that there is such a thing as world book day. we don't celebrate it here in this book-hating, tv-loving land of ours under the sun, but the rest of the world does. sad.

anyway, i got a message from one of my egroups that while april 23 is world book day, the philippine celebration is today, april 21. the institution that celebrates it here is the instituto cervantes, and they have loads of activities lined up from 10 am to 11 pm.

according to their website, manila.cervantes.es, some of the activities include:

- an open house of the institute
- a sale of 4000 brand new books at token price, a Book Market they call it
- free jazz shows (woe is me with two tone-deaf ears...)
- free salsa and Latin dance classes (woe is me with two left feet...)
- a Spanish food fair (anybody cutting costs on food? come on down!)
- La Mancha wine and cheese tasting (mmm...)

story goes that this world book day affair has its origins in catalonia, spain, where on st. george's day (04/23), men and women exchange a rose for a book. in 1995, unesco declared april 23 world book day after much prodding from spain and a host of other countries. so when you buy a book in instituto's Market today, you will get a rose too. neat idea, this book-for-a-rose thing (now why do i hear seal singing his song about a rose, a kiss, and what-not?).

the news release also says that april 23 is the date of birth or death of many writers, such as miguel de cervantes, william shakespeare, inca garcilaso de la vega, maurice druon, halldór laxness, vladimir nabokov, josep pla, and manuel mejía vallejo. i got a little curious, and i checked out wikipedia.com and below are some writers who were born or who died on what we now celebrate as world book day:

*(d) is death, (b) is birth

cervantes (d, 1616) - spanish; novelist, playwright, poet
shakespeare (d, 1616) - english; poet, playwright
dela vega (d, 1616) - peruvian; poet, writer on the subject of incas

*hey look, they died on the same year! not necessarily on the same day though, because of the julian and gregorian calendar thing. the wikipedia entry notes that under the julian calendar, the bard died on april 23, but under the gregorian calendar, he died on may 3

druon (b, 1918) - french; novelist
laxness (b, 1902) - icelandic; novelist, nobel prize winner 1955
pla (d, 1981) - spanish; journalist
georg fabricius (b, 1516) - german; poet
avram davidson (b, 1923) - american; fantasy, scifi, crime
ngaio marsh (b, 1895) - new zealand; detective [she was also into theater]
pascal quignard (b, 1948) - french; novelist, screenwriter
pierre labrie (b, 1972) - quebecois; poet
william wordsworth (d, 1850) - english; poet
jules-amédée barbey d'aurevilly (d, 1889) - french; novelist, short story writer
rupert chawner brooke (d, 1915) - english; poet
teresa de la parra (d, 1936) - venezuelan; novelist
pamela lyndon travers (d, 1996) - australian; author or mary poppins

vladimir nabokov (b, 1899) was, for a time, thought to have been born on april 23 1899. according to him, he was really born april 22.

on a final note, april 23 is also german beer day. wasak! inom tayo on world book day!