The Book Bucket Challenge

Facebook is all about challenges these days. We've had our dose of the Rice Bucket, the Sand Bucket, and of course, the original, Ice Bucket challenges. But we still haven't had enough. Very recently we came across the Book Bucket Challenge, which managed to generate much interest among writers and readers around the globe.
No, the Book Bucket Challenge is not about having a bunch of books dumped on your head from a bucket. The rules are rather simpler and not painful at all. All you have to do is make a list of ten books that have inspired you along with the names of their respective authors, in no particular order. Then you are to post the status on Facebook or any other social media with the hashtag #BookBucketChallenge, and nominate ten friends to do the same. The other options of taking the challenge include donating ten books to the needy and posting a photo of it with the same hashtag on any social media.

What a lot of us do not know is that the challenge is an initiative of an NGO based in Kerala named 'One Library per Village', which focuses on modernising and enriching libraries in villages. Sujai Pillai, the founder of the NGO, was the first to take the challenge. Pillai had promised to donate a few good books to an underprivileged little boy in his village. He was inspired by the other challenges that were flooding Facebook at the time and decided to start his own, which would benefit those who are deprived of the joy of reading.

While the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling booked the coveted throne of being most popular, some books made almost every list. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adam, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are among those books.

However, most bookworms expressed their discomfort in naming just ten books. A lot of other books they had in mind didn't make the list, they said, and felt as if they were doing a sort of injustice to those. Some also preferred not to tag their friends thinking of it as unnecessary, but that is just how the Book Bucket Challenge goes.
Unlike the Ice Bucket, the Book Bucket Challenge reached out more to the masses which included people from all age categories; some notable authors including Deborah Ellis, author of The Cat at the Wall and Anthony De Sa, author of Kicking the Sky did contribute to it. Facebook Data Science has revealed that there have been over 130,000 book list statuses in just the last few weeks of August and the figure is still rising with each day.