C an you imagine a world without books? It would be a nightmare!
We gain knowledge and enjoyment from books, and what we learn lasts a lifetime. In the wise words of an anonymous author, “Anyone who says they only have one life to live must not know how to read a book!”
Whether you’re a bookworm or not, here are some facts about reading that are guaranteed to fascinate!
- U.S. President Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826) collected books from a young age and is said to have built three home libraries in his lifetime. He is famous for saying, “I cannot live without books.”
- A bibliophile is a person who loves or collects books. The love of books is called bibliophilia. A bookworm, therefore, is a bibliophile or a person with bibliophilia.
- The Library of Congress, in the United States, is the world’s largest library. As of March 2013, its collection boasts of more than 155.3 million reading materials and around 838 miles of bookshelves. This includes more than 35 million books!
- Only about half of the reading material in the Library of Congress is in English. The other half consists of some 470 different languages.
- The smallest book in the Library of Congress is Old King Cole. It is 1/25” x 1/25”, or about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
- In 1998, a rare first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll raised $1.5M at auction in New York. The BBC News reports that only 22 copies of the 1865 first edition are known to exist.
- The Guinness Book of World Records names crime novelist, Agatha Christie, as the world’s best-selling author. She has sold roughly 4 billion books worldwide.
- Joanne Rowling had to use the name J.K. Rowling because her publishers wanted her to adopt a gender-neutral name. In fact, she does not have a middle name.
- The Voynich manuscript is the “world’s most mysterious manuscript.” Believed to have been written in Northern Italy in the 15th century, it resembles a botanical manuscript, but none of the plants can be identified. It is also written in an unknown language and script that no one has been able to decipher.
- Amazon released the Kindle First Generation on 19 November 2007. The e-reader sold out in a little more than five hours and remained out of stock for five months.
- Ex libris is a Latin phrase literally meaning “From the books.” It is used to indicate ownership of a book or “from the library of.” Bookplates are also sometimes known as ex libris.
- Johannes Gutenberg invented mechanical movable type printing in the mid-15th century, revolutionizing the printing of books.
- Old handwritten books containing illustrations and decorated in gold leaf are called illuminated manuscripts.
- Among pigments used in the illustrations of old, handwritten manuscripts are red from the lac insect; blue from indigo; yellow from turmeric or saffron; green from verdigris and black from soot.
If these facts have inspired you to read more, but you feel like you lack the time, there’s light at the end of the tunnel…
We gain knowledge and enjoyment from books, and what we learn lasts a lifetime. Click To TweetYou can boost your reading rate by learning great speed reading techniques such as those taught at Soundway Efficient Speed Reading™ workshops. The best part is that you get to race through a vast number of books and maintain your comprehension at the same time.
What this means is that while you may not be able to read all the books in the Library of Congress, you’ll probably be the best read person at most parties—and that’s a pretty impressive accomplishment!
photo credit: Le Jour ni l’Heure 4137 : autoportrait avec le Bon Usage, Plieux, bibliothèque, salle des Vents, vendredi 22 juin 2012, 21:32:43 via photopin (license)