World Book Night : will it work?

So, World Book Night (WBN) is intended to promote reading.
Maybe the collapse of Borders suggests a fading popularity.

I can see why an initiative like WBN has started.
Giving out free books >could< give people a taste for reading. (I remember at school being shocked by a friend who was surprised that I still read, in the same sort of tone as if I'd confessed belief in Santa)
Record labels put out sample tracks or bung free CDs into Sunday newspapers.

I do wonder about the titles though.
Now I've never read Lee Childs but I can see why he's there. He writes very successful thrillers that aren't (as yet) turned into movies. Maybe he'll act as a gateway drug like Alistair MacLean did for me.
Northen Lights by Phillip Pullman makes sense. It creates an air of wonder from the first page, which I've found surprisingly rare for fantasy.

But Cloud Atlas?
I adore Cloud Atlas. It's a series of six stories set from 1850 to the future and spanning genres, splitting at the half-way mark to be returned to in the book's latter half.
It gripped me when I first read it six years ago. Its two sci-fi stories are perhaps less successful. But the Russian doll structure means that you look forward to returning to the second half of the stories you're enjoying.
Yet I don't know if it'll reintroduce reading to people, particularly if it's thrust into their hands by strangers. It's not exactly accessible to a non-reader.

For this WBN, you've got volunteers giving out books in queues at chipshops, on Tube platforms.
It's wonderful.
The volunteers get to choose the books they dole out.
But looking at the official website, it seems like the Lee Child one's not proving too successful.
Instead Love In The Time Of Cholera is going like hot-cakes.
That might not convert new readers.
And brave is the soul who'll dish out The Reluctant Fundamentalist to a complete stranger.

I'm not wanting the list to be dumbed-down as such but I think there should be more entry-level books : Salmon Fishing In The Yemen, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, The Time-Traveller's Wife, White Teeth and Alan Furst's spy novels to complement Fingersmith, One Day and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time from this year's list.
Yeah, the Salmon...  film might be released next year but the email-based structure of the novel would show newbies what can be done.

So if the point is to inspire new readers, they need to make sure people are dishing out well-written books but the books need to be ones that'll enthuse and not daunt the reluctant reader.
And I'm not sure that's true of this year's list.