20 Fun Facts About Books

"Books give a soul to to the universe,wings to the mind,flight to the imagination,and life to everything"-Plato
As I think reading is dreaming with open eyes .Here are 20 fun facts about books that will amaze you.

1.The earliest known book work of literature is an epic poem titled Epic of Gilgamesh ,from ancient Mesopotamia.Because paper book did not exist at time it was written on 12 tablets.The book in now readily availabe of e-reader.

2.The world's first novel was The Tale of Genji ,written by Murasaki Shikibu,a noblewoman and lady in waiting in 11th century Japan.

3.The world's largest book made of paper is located in Dubai .The giant book titled This The Prophet Muhamed was created by Mshahed Internayional Group. It us 5 metres wide,8.06 metres long ,contains 429 pages and weighs over 13,00 kilograms.

4.The first book ever published was The Gutenberg Bible in 1453.It qas printed by the inventor of the printing press himself,Johannes Genfleish zur Laden zum Gutenberg.

5.Mark Twain's Life on Mississipi (1882) is considered by historians to be first book fully composed on a typewriter.

6.It is estimated that 7,55,755 new books are published every year.As of md-2017 ,there were an estimated 134,399,411 total published books in the world.


7.The worlds longest novel ever written is Rememberance of Things Past by Marcel Proust or A la recherche du temps perdu in its native language (french).It is estimated to have 9,609,00 characters.

8.The longest audiobook in the world is almost 5 days long.It was published in 2008 in Japan and consists of lectures from Takaai Yoshimoto,a philosopher, poet and literary critic.The book in total is 115 hours and 43 minutes long.

9.The best selling and most read book in the world is still The Bible. Although Harry Potter is close behind.

10.In june,2017 Argentine art icon Marta Minjuin created a to -scal Parathenon made up of banned books ,plastic -wraps and metal grills.However instead of building it at the Acropolis in Athens ,he built it at a historic Nazi book burnig site in central Germany.The 'Banned Book Parathenon' consisted of 1,00,000 copies of 170 titles.

11.If you publish a book in Norway,the government will buy 1000 copies (1500 if children's book)and distribute them to libraries throughout the country.

12.An Icelandic tradition called Jólabókaflód exists ,where books are exchanged as Christmas Eve presents and the rest of the night is spent reading them and eating chocolates.

13.The guy who managed Guinness Breweries in the 1950s went to a shooting party,where he missed his shot at golden plover.In his defense,he argued it was the fastest game bird in Europe,but had no means to prove it.That's why he created Guinness Book of Records. 

14.The most commonly used sentence in the Harry Potter book series was:"Nothing happened";for Hunger Games series it was:"My name is Katniss Everdeen";and for Twilight series ,it was:"I sighed".

15.68% of books sold worldwide are bought by women.

16.The word for loving the smell of old book is 'Biblosmia'.Similar to carbon -dating ,scientists can analyze the chemicals responsible for the "old book smell" to determine the age of book .The process is called 'material degradomics"


17.The term "bookworm" originates from insects who live in and feed on the binding of books.

18.The term 'yahoo' actually comes from Gullivers Travels published in 1726.

19.The Japanese word 'tsundoku' means buying a load of books and then not getting round to read them.

20.The earliest known written instance of the word 'book' is in a book by Alfred the Great.


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