We celebrated Valentine’s Day this year at ZSR with our annual Blind Date with a Book (BDWAB) program. This year we gave away around 350 books to excited students during this cherished library tradition. The event promotes leisure reading while celebrating and supporting our community of readers at Wake Forest.

We gather popular fiction and non-fiction books throughout the year to prepare for the event. We receive book donations from ZSR faculty and staff as well as Bookmarks– a local independent bookstore and literary arts nonprofit organization. We also add to our collection with books that we purchase from McKay’s. We try to provide a wide array of books from various authors. The books range from memoirs, literary fiction, poetry, short stories, essays, genre fiction, graphic novels, and more.

The books are wrapped and decorated (concealing the cover, title, and author) and have a handwritten description giving participants clues about the book. They then get to choose what calls to them and take it home as theirs to keep. It is so exciting to see the reactions of students and those in the community. Here is some feedback we received this year:

“This is my favorite event of the year!”

“This is so cute! It literally made my week.”

“I love this! I look forward to it every year!”

We hand-wrap hundreds of books throughout the year to prepare for the event and couldn’t do it alone. A huge shout-out to our ZSR Library Ambassadors, ZSR student employees, and our volunteers. This event is a labor of love and we are so thankful for those who help make the event a success.❤️

More photos from the event can be found on the ZSR Library’s Flickr site. We are looking forward to this event again next year!