Book Week: Interactive celebrity guide to favourite books

Numerous Spanish celebrities and well known public figures are taking part in a marathon 48-hour reading session of one of the Spanish-speaking world's most famous literary works, Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote.

An estimated 1,400 people are taking part in the two-day reading.

The relay-style reading, with each person taking the stand for exactly two minutes, also includes video link-ups with participants in Europe and Latin America.

The event began last year as a way of celebrating Spain's National Book Day, but it also coincides with the award of the Cervantes Prize for Literature, the Spanish-speaking world's equivalent of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

It is awarded annually to a writer considered to have made an important contribution to the Spanish language. The Cuban author, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, won this year's award and received the prize from the King and Queen of Spain.

National Book Day is an important event in the Spanish calendar, and is held to encourage people to read more.

In the region of Catalonia in northeastern Spain, it is traditional to give your loved one a book or a rose.

However the tradition has upset some women, who say the tradition is rather sexist, since it involves the man getting the book and the woman the rose.