Every August 9th, readers around the world put down their phones, pick up whatever novel has been glaring at them from the nightstand, and declare a small, unofficial holiday in honour of the thing they love most: books. Its origins are murky enough that nobody has managed to pin down who started it or why, and it seems to have grown organically out of the reading community itself rather than being handed down by any official body.

And honestly, that is the best part of it. This is a holiday book lovers basically invented for themselves, because nobody else was going to do it for them. Valentine’s Day has florists lobbying on its behalf. Book Lovers Day has us—a slightly feral community of people who dog-ear pages we swear we’ll never dog-ear, cry over fictional deaths more than real ones sometimes, and consider a library card one of the more romantic documents a person can carry.

 

 

So this year, instead of just reading (though obviously, read), here are ten ways to mark the day that go a little further than the usual “curl up with a book” advice. They’re split into three moods: things you can make with your hands, things you can do purely for the love of the story, and things that pull other people into the fun.

 

Purely Bookish Ideas (For the Solo Reader)

1. Try a blind date with a book. Wrap a few books in plain paper, write three cryptic clues on each (genre, one theme, one line from the first page), and pick one without knowing what’s inside. It forces you out of the algorithm-approved rut and back into genuine surprise.

 

 

2. Hunt for a single colour. Go to a bookstore with one rule: only buy books with a specific colour spine. Orange, teal, whatever catches your eye that day. It sounds arbitrary, but it’s a surprisingly reliable way to end up with books outside your usual taste, since you’re choosing by instinct instead of by genre or author you already trust.

3. Write a spine poem. Dig through your shelf for titles that, stacked in the right order, start to read like a sentence instead of a list. The trick is picking for rhythm and mood rather than subject alone, so the stack reads like four lines that belong together. It costs nothing, takes ten minutes, and photographs beautifully for anyone documenting the day online.

 

 

4. Write a letter to the author or character who shaped you. Not to send, necessarily, though you can try if they’re living and findable. Just an honest page addressed to whoever first made you feel understood on paper: what their book gave you, what you’d tell them now, what you’d ask if you had the chance. It’s a stranger kind of gratitude than a five-star review, and a far more literary one.

 

DIY and Crafty Ways to Celebrate

5. Build a tiny diorama of your favourite scene. Pick a moment that’s lived in your head rent-free since you first read it: the Mad Hatter’s tea table, the Beast’s library, the platform at King’s Cross. Shoeboxes, paper, and an afternoon are all you need. It sounds like a primary school art project, and it is, which is exactly why it works. Nostalgia is doing half the labour for you.

 

 

6. Turn a favourite line into wall art. Pick the sentence from a book that stopped you cold the first time you read it, letter it out by hand on a plain sheet of paper or card, and frame it. No calligraphy skills required, block letters do the job just fine. It’s a very personal piece of art that you will cherish forever.

7. Make bookish candles or bookmarks scented to match a genre. Cinnamon and clove for a gothic novel, something green and mossy for fantasy, salt and citrus for a beach read. Fold your bookmarks from scrap paper, old wrapping paper, or sheet music rather than book pages, so nothing you already own has to be sacrificed for the craft. It’s a small sensory ritual that makes rereading an old favourite feel like a whole new experience.

 

 

With Friends and the Wider Reading Community

8. Host a silent reading party. Invite a few friends over, put on a candle, make tea, and read separately together for an hour. No talking, no phones, just the comfort of being surrounded by people who are also somewhere else entirely in their heads.

 

 

9. Do a blind book swap with friends. Everyone wraps a book they loved, no names attached, and swaps at random. It’s part gift exchange, part recommendation engine, and part excuse to see what your friends have secretly been reading without telling anyone.

10. Start or restock a Little Free Library. If there’s one in your neighbourhood, drop off a few titles you’ve finished and are ready to let go of. If there isn’t one, Book Lovers Day is as good an excuse as any to set one up: Little Free Library is a nonprofit that sets up “take a book, share a book” boxes on front lawns and street corners, and getting one going is simpler than it looks. Build a small weatherproof box yourself or buy one through their online store, pick a spot with decent foot traffic, stock it with 20 to 100 books, and register it with a charter sign so it counts as an official library on their world map. Passing a book along to a stranger is one of the last truly anonymous kindnesses left, and it costs you nothing but love and a paperback.

 

 

However you spend the 9th, the point of this odd little holiday isn’t really the specific activity. It’s the reminder that reading, which so often gets treated as a solitary or even slightly antisocial habit, has an entire community behind it, one loud and affectionate enough to invent its own holiday out of thin air. Pick whichever of these feels most like you, or do all ten and call it a very literary weekend. Either way, we made this day for ourselves. We might as well enjoy it properly.