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Mark Zuckerberg Aims to Start World’s Largest Bookclub on Facebook
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While many worry that Facebook and Twitter are destroying both our attention spans and our ability to immerse ourselves in books, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this month that he is reading a book every two weeks and invited 30 million Facebook friends to join along. In the announcement, Zuckerberg says:
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.

You can join the challenge by liking the “A Year of Books” Facebook page. The page already has 94,000 likes as of Sunday afternoon. If even a fraction of these people purchase the books, it would have a real impact on the publishing industry (as anyone who remembers Oprah’s book club can attest).
This sounds great to us since, well, books are awesome. The first pick is The End of Power by Moisés Naím if you want to read along.

