People who do not read are always at the bottom rung of the knowledge chain and this often translates to not making any personal or career advances

– Abigail Anaba

First we brought you the GrillandRead Book Party. Then we brought you SpeedDatingwithBooks. Next we brought you the GrillandRead Reading Festival. And now we present you the GrillandRead Annual Readers Award. We have indeed come a long way in the last one year, but we are not relenting.

Our goal is to get as many persons as possible on the road to reading for pleasure. Everyone wants to read, but few are able to pick up a book.

When you really think about it, our daily routine so chokes up our time and the rigour of settling down to read is so daunting that we might spend more time thinking of how great it will be to read while doing absolutely nothing about the status quo. Yet, each day, we do spend some time doing some reading. We read road signs, we read the instructions on the medicine pack, and if we are on social media, we may actually be reading more than we normally do as communication is almost always in writing. What we may not be doing is reading books for pleasure.

One reason we may not be reading is that it is possible to get away with it. Or, rather, we think it is possible to get away with it. The reality is that we hardly ever do. People who do not read are always at the bottom rung of the knowledge chain and this often translates to not making any personal or career advances.

The saying, “reading improves the mind” should be taken quite literally. To prove how true this is, GrillandRead (the brand that has sought to redefine and celebrate reading for pleasure with fun events and activities for the past one year) is challenging non-readers to a five week campaign tagged APageaDay. This campaign is aimed at showing the difference that reading a page of a book a day can make in your life. Yes, we are saying that spending just one minute a day reading for pleasure can change your life!

How you can participate in the #APageaDay Campaign.

The #APageaDay campaign is open to everyone who can hold up a book and read for themselves. To join the campaign all a person needs to do is, as the name suggests, read a page from a book every day for the next five weeks.

They can choose to read any type of book – fiction or nonfiction – or any genre. They can choose to read pages from different books within this period. They only must read things that give them pleasure.

To make this reading even more fun and challenging, GrillandRead is offering one seat on the GaRARA2017 VVIP table to five persons within this five week period. All they need to do is upload a one minute video of themselves reading a book and tagging it #GaRARA2017 #APageaDay #Entry.

Searching these hash tags will reveal samples for this campaign. Every week, for five weeks, entries will be collated across Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and a draw will be done to determine who wins.

Needless to say, the more entries send in, the greater ones chances of winning! The campaign kicked off on August 29, 2017, and it will be on for five weeks. Two winners have emerged so far, three more to go. We hope you will have much fun engaging in the #APageaDay campaign. Like we like to say, reading a page a day, keeps the boredom away.

– Abigail Anaba, Convener, Grill and Read

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Grill and Read Annual Readers Awards #GaRARA is going down on October 28. Grill and Read is an initiative set up to encourage and preserve the reading culture. Nominees have been chosen from various categories including:

– Reader-Motivator of the Year
– Reader’s Event of the Year
– Reader’s Show of the Year
– Discovery of the Year and
– Book of the Year
– Publisher of the Year
– Library of the Year
– Book Cover Art of the year among others.

The event will also feature special appearance by award winning artiste, Timi Dakolo. Lots to read, grill and eat.

Please click here to reserve a seat for the event now. So, who wins a GaRARA this year?