Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg launches book club

Facebook founder Mar Zuckerberg takes on a new challenge every year

A book club started by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has already had almost 140,000 "likes".

The billionaire social network founder has set up the Facebook group "A Year of Book", inviting others to join him in reading a new book every other week.

Mr Zuckerberg said the books chosen would emphasise learning about "different cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies".

He said he was "looking forward" to his 2015 challenge.

"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," Mr Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page.

The first book selected, The End of Power by Moisés Naím, is currently ranked 71st on Amazon's best seller list and is already temporarily out of stock, indicating the influence on book sales the club could have.

Mr Zuckerberg takes on a new challenge each year, aimed at learning something about the world beyond his work at Facebook, and canvassed publicly for ideas on what his latest challenge should be.

Previous challenges include learning to speak Mandarin, meeting one new person who doesn't work at Facebook every day, being a vegetarian and wearing a tie every day.