Did You Know? 20 fun facts about Books

By now you all already know about my love for books and reading. Snuggling in the bed with a book in my hand or being alone and reading a good book with a cup of coffee is some thing I love. 

With books, one can drift away in to an unknown world with unknown people as they narrate their story to you. Reading has so much to offer in the form of novels, short stories or poems. It’s a whole new world, which is more fascinating and enchanting than one thinks. 

Since I love books so much, this time I thought to write about some interesting and rather lesser known facts about them.  So read on…

Most Expensive book: How much could a book cost? Or which is the most expensive book that you have got? Now hear this, Bill Gates paid a whooping $30.8 million in 1994 for “Codex Leicester” by Leonardo Da Vinci. Now just add the current market value and inflation to it…Do you wish to buy this book? 

Longest Sentence: How long can one sentence be? Any guesses? Victor Hugo in his book “Les Miserables” wrote a sentence which was 823 words long. I managed to get my hands on a version of that sentence which is again 805 words long. Read it here.

Road made out of Book Pulp: We travel with books, we all have heard that, but what about travelling over the books.The M6 toll road in Birmingham, UK is a 26 mile long six lane motorway and it took 2.5 million copies of Mills & Boon novel which was pulped and later used as the top layer of the motorway. 

Anthropodermic bibliopegy: This term is used for books bound in Human Skin. Yes you read that right. Harvard University Library has confirmed that it has “Des destinées de l’ame” (Destinies of The Soul), which was published sometime in the 1880s, is 99.9% bound in human skin. This act of binding books in Human skin was common in 15^thcentury and was done to memorialize the dead.  Know More

Most Read Books in the world: Bible has outnumbered every other book and sold 3.9 billion copies followed by “Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse- Tung” also know as “The Little Red Book” which sold 820 million copies while Harry Potter books sold 400 million copies. (Data Dated 2012).  

Longest Book title: Vityala Yethindra of India in 2019 wrote a book with a title which has 3777 words to it. The title goes as such “The historical development of the Heart…………..” as the author decided to mention all the species mentioned in the book. Read More

Highest Fine Paid: Emily Canellos- Simms paid a fine of $345 to Kewanee Public Library in Illinois for a book, which was due in April 1955 and returned after Emily found it at her mother’s house. Read More

Youngest Author: Dorothy Straight was only 4 years and 3 months old when she published her book “How the world began” in 1964. This book was written in her response to her mom’s question “Who made the world?” and her parents loved the book so much that they got it published. Photo Credit

Kindle Sales: the 1^st ever Kindle which cost $399 was sold out within 5 ½ hrs and the 2^nd lot for sales was available after a waiting period of 5 months of its release in Nov 2007. Read More

One book a day: Former American President Theodore Roosevelt  was a bibliophile and how. He read 1 book a day even while he was a President. Now that’s a lot of reading done in a day. How did he even manage the time. Or rather, did he even sleep?  Read More

Indian’s read the most: This made me really happy. As per the 2005 BOP world Culture Score Index, an average Indian reads for 10.7 hours every week. Thailand and China come after India while Americans read half as much as Indians with just 5 hours  a week. Read More

Banned Books: Will you believe if I said that the most banned book in USA has been “Harry Potter”? Yes, you read that right. This fantasy novel has been banned in most parts of America, citing the reason that the book encourages witchcraft, wizardry and other religious complaints. Read More

LOTR was typed with just 2 fingers: Writing a triology which has nearly 1200 pages can be tough but what is more interesting is that the author of “Lord of The Rings“, J.R.R. Tolkein typed the entire trilogy with just two fingers.

Library of Alexandira: Ancient Library of Alexandria, in Egypt, had a rule that any boat which came to the port, had to submit any book that it had to the library and the library would return a copy of the same book to its owner. Before the library was engulfed with fire, it had a collection of over 400,000 scrolls of texts. Read More

Charles Dickens Fake book case: The famous author of Oliver Twist and Tale of two cities had a book case at his home which showcased fake books with some really unique and witty names. This bookcase worked as a secret door and the names of these book were chosen by Dickens himself.

Largest published book: One edition of “The Little Prince” published by Eidouro Publicações, Brazil, holds the record of being the largest published book measuring 6.7ft in height 10.1ft wide when open and has 128 pages. The book was showcased in the 2007 “XIII Biannual Book Fair” of Rio de Janeiro. Read More

World’s smallest published book: “Teeny Ted from Turnip Town” is the world’s tiniest book to be published and requires a magnifying glass to read it. It measures at 70 micrometers X 100 micrometers and cost $15000 to be printed on pure crystalline silicone. Read More

Human Library: We all know that books tell us some amazing stories but in Copenhagen, Denmark, the term “I am an open book” gets as whole new meaning with the “Human Library” wherein one can borrow people for a certain amount of time and these volunteered human books share their unique life stories with you. Read More

Story Vending Machine: In Canary Wharf, UK, a busy financial area, you can see people reading out of scroll paper printed from a vending machine. This machine is designed to print out small stories for it’s readers by the click of a button. Read More

Worlds fastest Reader: An average person can read around 250 to 300 words in a minute with nearly 70% comprehension but Maria Teresa of Philippines can read half a book by the time you finish to read a label of a shampoo bottle. She read a 3-page long college level essay of 3135 words in just 3.5 seconds. Read More

Reading is a part of everyone’s life, be it in the form of book, Instagram, Facebook, newspaper, food stickers or even e-mails. You are always skimming, scrolling or swiping through something or the other. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed compiling this list. It’s fascinating how a book has so much to say beyond its story. A story behind a storybook. 

With this post, i am taking my blog to next level with Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa and you will find my post under the hashtag of #mummatalkswrites on all social media platforms.