National something week

It's National Library Week in the US. This made me ask: does the UK have a similar thing? A Google search led me to the National Literacy Trust and their reading events calendar. Every month is covered. No National Library Week but some good looking events. I've missed the Day for April - International Children's Book Day - but all of May is National Share a Story Month. This sounds great. I love stories. I was thus disappointed to see that this seems solely aimed at children. Surely the "power of story" is something that can be appreciated by people of all ages. In fact, earlier this year I went to a performance put on by the Crick Crack Club, who carry on the tradition of storytelling for audiences of different ages. (Think I must have unknowingly participated in National Storytelling Week, which is in February).

The UK may not have a National Library Week, or at best a badly publicised one, but storytelling is alive and well here. The aforementioned National Storytelling Week is connected with the Society for Story Telling. If you're in London there's the London Centre for International Storytelling. These people currently have an HLF grant "to archive and document live recordings of public storytelling by professional performers". The on-line search they've set up is easy to use and gives lots of information. The Archive includes stories from all over the world and on many different subjects.

I'm convinced other countries have events similar to National Library Week. Finding out would involve a more dedicated search than I'm willing to do.

Dreaming in colour

I've been watching Japanese movies lately and as a consequence have been dreaming in anime. Disturbing? Yes, I think so. It's much nicer though then dreaming of numbering boxes or counting files, which it's not uncommon for me to do.