Bookish World Record broken in Romania!

Hello and Happy International Book Day! On this special occasion I bring exciting news from Romania:

✨The Guinness World Record for the largest chain of people reading was broken! ✨

The previous record for the largest chain of people reading was 3.071 people (in India) … and yesterday there were a total of 3.320 participants!

The event took place in Brașov, a beautiful city situated at a 3-hour drive from Bucharest, and was organized by C’Art Fest Association.

If you’re wondering how more than 3.000 people read in a line, here’s how the participants’ journey was:

1. get in the line of people willing to participate
2. register as a participant and receive a bracelet with your number and the associated sentence you need to read
3. read the sentence quickly in front of a microphone and camera (no pressure!)
4. sign that you took part in the reading chain

If you want to see a “helicopter view” of the event, here’s a short video shot with a drone.

The book read during the event was “Barefoot” (RO: Desculț) by the Romanian writer Zaharia Stancu. “Barefoot” was published in 1948 and it was Stancu’s most important novel, being translated into more than 30 languages.

I personally had to read a very short sentence (5 words), the 814th sentence of the book 🙂 But more than reading the sentence, I was amazed by how many people came together for the love of books and waited patiently for their turn while reading or discussing bookish topics.

I went home in the afternoon not only with great memories and fingers crossed for the record to be broken (the event lasted from 12.00 until 20.00), but also with 2 gorgeous bookish T-shirts I’m so proud of! The one on the left is inspired by the Latin saying “Carpe Diem” (“Carte” means book in Romanian), while the T-shirt on the right rephrases a Romanian saying and suggests that I took part in the reading chain (the approximate translations is “I have a book, I am participating”). Lovely! ❤

I want to conclude by congratulating the organizers for having the idea of putting Romania on the map of bookish World Records, and by wishing them good luck with the following steps that need to be taken in order to have the final approvals from Guinness World Record!

These being said, I wish you all a very happy International Book Day!

‘Till next time … happy reading!

Georgiana

Cover image from CarteaSiOmu.ro. All the other pictures were taken by me.