“To the cynics, World Book Night must seem like windmill-tilting. After all, aren’t books meant to be going the way of Ceefax, or good manners? Well, no, they’re not. Polls show that reading has been rising in popularity for decades; literary festivals such as Hay are attracting huge crowds; and even if sales of paperbacks are falling, those of eBooks are shooting up. The real challenge is not to save books, but to widen the circle of those who love them.”