Allir lesa [Everybody Read] - a Fun Reading Community Online

The Icelandic Literature Centre and Reykjavik UNESCO City of Literature launched a reading website in 2014, hosting a fun competition each year called ALLIR LESA (Everybody Read), which was a national championship of reading. Project ended in June 2018.

The Icelandic Literature Centre and Reykjavik UNESCO City of Literature have launched a reading website hostingt a fun competition each year called ALLIR LESA (Everybody Read), which is a national championship of reading. Participants document their reading on the website allirlesa.is

The goal with allirlesa.is is to boost reading in Iceland and to get more people to experience the joy of reading. The game is meant to encourage those who read to read even more and get those started that read little or absolutely nothing. ALLIR LESA is a team competition, similar in structure to the Hjólað í vinnuna (Biking to Work) campaign.

People of all ages sign up and document online all the titles they read and the time spent reading. As people read at a different speed that depends on various factors, it's not the number of pages that count but the minutes spent reading. This is not a speed reading competition, people should be able to take their time and enjoy the act of reading.

It makes no different what kind of books people read or on what kind of format; printed texts, ebooks, or audio books, every type of book is valid in the competition, in any language. The books can be fiction, non-fiction, documents, or anything at all.

The national championship is a team sport where work places, homes, school classrooms, friend groups, etc. can participate. The first game took place between 17 October - 16 November 2014, and the next one will be on the 21 January - 22 February 2016.

www.allirlesa.is