Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg starts reading program
In a Thursday, Sept. 18, 2014 file photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks to students during an special assembly at Sequoia High School in Redwood City, Calif. The Facebook founder and CEO announced on his page recently that he has vowed to read a book every other week in 2015, with an emphasis on learning about different beliefs and cultures. AP
NEW YORK — Mark Zuckerberg wants to add a little more “book” to Facebook.
The Facebook founder and CEO announced on his page recently that he has vowed to read a book every other week in 2015, with an emphasis on learning about different beliefs, cultures and technologies.
Zuckerberg created a page called “A Year of Books” and urged his friends to join him in the project. As of late Sunday afternoon, it had more than 100,000 likes.
“I’m excited for my reading challenge,” Zuckerberg wrote. “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.”
The first book in his program, Moises Naim’s “The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be,” was out of stock Sunday on Amazon.com and had a sales ranking of No. 138.
“The End of Power” was listed among Amazon’s “movers & shakers” Sunday for books making the biggest gains on the best-seller list.
The Venezuelan-born Naim is an award-winning columnist, author and television host, a former trade minister in his native country and currently a distinguished fellow in the International Economics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“The End of Power” was first published by Basic Books in 2013.
“It’s a book that explores how the world is shifting to give individual people more power that was traditionally only held by large governments, militaries and other organizations,” Zuckerberg wrote. “The trend toward giving people more power is one I believe in deeply.”
Zuckerberg’s literary tastes include classics from ancient Greece and Rome, biographies, celebrity memoirs and science and science fiction. He has called Virgil’s “The Aeneid” his favorite book and has quoted from it during interviews. His “likes” range from Plato to Orson Scott Card’s novel “Ender’s Game.” According to his Facebook page, books he has read include Jay-Z’s “Decoded,” Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of Albert Einstein and science writer’s James Gleick’s “The Information.”
TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey remains the gold standard for choosing books, though clubs have been started by “Good Morning America” and the “Today” show, among others.
Winfrey’s most recent pick, Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Invention of Wings,” was announced in early 2014 and became one of the year’s top-selling novels.
