World Book Day!

I just found out that it's World Book Day today. Whee! It's nice to feel like I was able to catch up to a geek holiday in time (seeing that I already missed Pi Day this year), and it's also nice to think that all over the world (hopefully at least), people are celebrating books today.

Only it turns out that World Book Day is not World Book Day everywhere but only in the UK and Ireland. As worldbookday.com kindly tells me in its FAQ,  the rest of the world will celebrate that day some other time, oh, probably in April. The Unesco webpage tells me that the rest of the world is celebrating World Book and Copyright Day on April 23.

Really? Why can't there be one single date for world book day? I really like the idea - it's cool, and I'm all for making books the reason for some celebration. But can we please agree on the fact that a world something day should be on the same date for, say, the world? And not split into two? Even if the area in question has a history of being a special snowflake?

I honestly don't know what to think about this. It's really cool, and really weird that it's on two dates and that the split-off celebration seems to be larger and much more enthusiastic than the official one.
So, if you live in the UK or Ireland, I wish you a happy book day - it seems as if the organisation running the schemes and organising the day is doing a very nice job, and much fun is being had, and books are being promoted, and reading is, which is absolutely awesome. The rest of us will wait, though, until it is our turn in April - when stuff is probably going to be much more subdued.