Mark Zuckerberg invites all Facebook users to join his book club

5 Jan 2015

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has launched his own book club, inviting all users of the social network to take part.

The project, dubbed ‘A Year of Books’, encourages participants to read a new title every two weeks that Zuckerberg himself will choose from suggestions.

The idea came about on New Year’s Eve after the 30-year-old asked his followers to add to his list of personal challenges for 2015, with his original outline featuring such heart-warming chestnuts as, “Meeting one new person who doesn’t work at Facebook every day,” and, “Writing a thank you note each day to someone who made the world better”.

In response, Cynthia Greco suggested Zuckerberg “read a new book every month BUT, someone else gets to choose the book,”, to which he replied “I really like this idea”.

Zuckerberg took to his page again on Saturday (January 3) to official announce the project. “My challenge for 2015 is to read a new book every other week – with an emphasis on learning about different cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies,” he posted. “I’m excited for my reading challenge. I’ve found reading books very intellectually fulfilling. Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today. I’m looking forward to shifting more of my media diet towards reading books.”

The project has been compared to ‘Oprah’s Book Club’, a segment on long-running talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show that invited viewers to read selected novels. Such was the segment’s success that being picked could turn little known books into best sellers.The first title to be chosen by Zuckerberg is The End of Power by Moisés Naím. 

Also on the Facebook CEO’s list of personal challenges was learning to speak Mandarin, though last October he appeared at wowed the audience at a Q&A at the Tsinghua University in Beijing by answering a number of questions in the language.

Mark Zuckerberg image via Shutterstock

Dean Van Nguyen was a contributor to Silicon Republic

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